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MEMORIAL 


A  QUARTER-CENTURY'S  PASTORATE. 


A    SERMON 

Preached  on  the  Sabbaths,  Jan.  3d  and  17th,  1869, 

IN    THE 

PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH,  NATCHEZ,  MISS. 

BY 

REV.   JOSEPH    B.   STRATTON,   D.D. 


PUBLISHED    FOR   THE    USE    OF    THE    CONGREGATION. 


PHILADELPHIA: 

J.    B.    LIPPINCOTT    &    CO. 

1869. 


1 

"  .« 


.   -  •  - 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 


•  &SgSe3- 


PAET    FIEST. 


"Neglect  not  the  gift  that  is  in  thee,  which  was  given  thee  hy  pro- 
phecy, with  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the  preshytery." — I.  Tim. 
iv.  14.  

The  word  "gift,"  employed  by  the  apostle  here,  is  a 
comprehensive  term,  meaning  the  office  of  a  Christian 
minister,  which  it  was  Timothy's  privilege  to  exercise, 
and  the  qualifications  for  that  office  which  had  been  con- 
ferred upon  him  by  the  providence  and  Spirit  of  God. 
The  word  could  with  propriety  be  applied  still  to  any 
Christian  minister;  although  in  Timothy's  case  his  quali- 
fications may  have  included  some  of  those  supernatural 
powers  which  we  know  were  conferred  in  the  apos- 
tolic age  upon  officers  and  even  private  members  of  the 
Church, — which  no  Christian  minister  now  is  authorized 
to  claim. 

The  "gift,"  in  virtue  of  which  Timothy  was  constituted 
a  Christian  minister,  is  said  to  have  been  given  to  him 
"  by  prophecy,  with  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the 

(ff) 


4  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

presbytery."  The  reference  to  "prophecy,"  as  connected 
with  his  induction  into  his  office,  is  most  naturally  ex- 
plained by  supposing  it  to  mean  some  intimations  made, 
at  some  unknown  period,  by  parties  gifted  with  the  power 
of  prophesying  or  speaking  for  God,  that  it  was  the  will 
of  God  that  Timothy  should  adopt  as  his  calling  the  work 
of  the  ministry.  An  instance  of  such  intimations  we  find 
in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Acts,  where  we  read — as  cer- 
tain persons  in  Antioch,  called  "prophets  and  teachers," 
were  ministering  to  the  Lord,  and  fasting,  the  Holy  Ghost 
said, — doubtless  to  them  and  through  them, — "Separate 
me  Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  whereunto  I  have 
called  them."  Concurrently  with  this  "  prophecy"  which 
designated  him  to  his  office,  we  are  told  Timothy's  gift 
was  "given  him  with  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the 
presbytery."  The  term  "presbytery,"  here,  means  a  body 
of  men  bearing  the  office  of  presbyters,  —  or  elders,  as 
the  word  is  generally  rendered  in  our  translation.  ]STo 
other  meaning  can  be  given  to  it  without  landing  us  in 
grammatical  or  logical  absurdity.  To  preclude  all  ques- 
tion, however,  as  to  its  meaning,  we  find  it  occurring  in 
two  other  places  in  the  E"ew  Testament, — once  in  Luke 
xxii.  66,  where  it  is  said,  "the  elders  of  the  people"  (in 
the  original,  "the  presbytery  of  the  people")  "came 
together"  in  council;  and  again  in  Acts  xxii.  5,  where 
it  is  said  by  Paul,  in  his  defense  before  the  populace  of 
Jerusalem,  "the  high-priest,  and  all  the  estate  of  the 
elders"  (in  the  original,  "all  the  presbytery"),  "bear 
me  witness;"  —  places  where  no  one  ever  dreamed,  or 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  5 

could  dream,  that  it  meant  anything  else  than  a  body 
of  men  bearing  the  office  of  presbyters,  or  elders. 

Now,  who  or  what  sort  of  men  these  presbyters  were, 
with  the  imposition  of  whose  hands  Timothy  was  in- 
vested with  his  office,  a  glance  at  the  allusions  to  be 
found  in  the  book  of  Acts  and  the  Epistles  will  inform 
us.  We  find  Paul  and  Barnabas  ordaining  them  in  the 
churches  of  Asia  Minor,  which  they  had  gathered  during 
that  mission  unto  which  the  Holy  Ghost  had  required 
them  to  be  "separated;" — we  find  them  in  the  church 
at  Jerusalem; — we  find  them  in  the  church  at  Ephe- 
sus; — we  find  them,  in  fact,  everywhere  where  the  reli- 
gion of  Christ  appears  embodying  itself  in  an  organized 
community  of  believers.  They  constitute,  as  plainly  as 
history  can  teach  it,  the  regular,  the  local,  the  stationary 
ruling  and  teaching  estate  in  the  corporation  of  the 
Church.  Their  title  was  transferred  from  the  usage  of 
the  Old  Testament  Church, — was  venerable  for  its  an- 
tiquity, and  sanctioned  by  a  Divine  warrant.  Their 
functions  embrace  all  the  forms  of  service  attached  in 
the  Scriptures  to  the  Christian  ministry.  They  are 
called  very  frequently  the  "overseers"  or  "bishops" 
of  the  Church  of  God, — a  name  expressing  in  its  import 
the  whole  circle  of  acts  by  which  superintendence,  gov- 
ernment, or  nurture  could  be  exercised  or  administered 
in  the  Church.  That  this  is  so, — that  the  term  overseer 
or  bishop,  in  the  language  of  the  New  Testament,  is  con- 
vertible with  presbyter,— any  one  can  satisfy  himself  by 
looking  at  the  twenty-eighth  verse  of  Acts  xx.,  where 


Q  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

Paul  says  to  the  Ephesian  elders  convened  by  him  at 
Miletus,  "  Take  heed  unto  yourselves,  and  to  all  the  flock, 
over  the  which  the  Holy  Ghost  hath  made  you  over- 
seers" (or,  as  the  word  is  in  the  original,  "bishops"), — or 
by  looking  at  Tit.  i.  5,  6,  and  7,  where,  after  telling 
Titus  to  ordain  elders  in  Crete,  provided  he  could  find 
any  who  were  "  blameless,"  the  same  apostle  adds,  "  for 
a  bishop  must  be  blameless;"  evidently  using  the  words 
elder  and  bishop  as  interchangeable.  Agreeably  with 
these  cases,  in  every  instance  in  the  New  Testament 
where  the  word  bishop  occurs,  the  word  presbyter  or 
elder  may  be,  and  ought  to  be,  allowed  as  a  substitute; 
and  every  function  which  is  ascribed  to  the  office  of 
bishop  may  be,  and  ought  to  be,  ascribed  to  that  of 
presbyter  or  elder.    . 

This  office,  I  remark  now,  was  manifestly,  according 
to  the  New  Testament,  the  one  which  was  to  perpetuate 
the  ruling  and  teaching  estate  in  the  Church.  The  apos- 
tolic college,  after  the  addition  of  Matthias  and  Paul  to 
it,  consisted  of  thirteen  persons.  While  they  lived,  they 
were  presbyters,  or  bishops, — that  is,  officers  clothed 
with  the  power  of  ruling  and  teaching, — in  common 
with  those  who  bore,  in  a  technical  sense,  these  titles. 
Hence  we  find  Peter  saying,  "  The  elders  which  are 
among  you  I  exhort,  who  am  also  an  elder;"  and 
John,  in  two  of  his  epistles,  styling  himself  "the  elder." 
But  the  apostles  were  more  than  this.  They  were 
charged  with  functions  which,  in  the  nature  of  the  case, 
could  not  be  shared  with  others,  and  could  not  be  trans- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  7 

feited  to  other  hands.  They  must,  for  instance,  be  able 
to  say  that  their  commission  had  come  to  them  directly 
from  the  Lord ;  that  they  had  had  a  personal  acquaint- 
ance with  Him ;  and  that  they  were  authorized  to  affirm 
His  resurrection  and  His  present  existence  from  their 
own  observation.  Thus,  Paul  was  accustomed  to  make 
good  his  claim  to  the  apostleship  by  the  bold  challenge, 
"Have  not  I  seen  the  Lord?"  They  must,  furthermore, 
be  inspired  men, — capable  of  completing  the  faith  of  the 
Church  by  expounding  the  revelations  which  Christ  had 
made,  and  by  adding  to  these  such  as  the  Holy  Ghost  saw 
fit  yet  to  make.  They  must  stand  where  the  prophet  of 
the  Old  Dispensation  stood,  and  speak  to  the  minds  and 
consciences  of  men  with  the  authority  of  God.  This 
they  affirm,  again  and  again,  that  tjiey  do  do.  But  no 
class  of  persons  but  they  could  do  it.  The  apostles,  in- 
dubitably, had  a  place  to  fill,  peculiar  to  themselves ;  and 
it  is  a  solecism  to  speak  of  their  having  successors  in  the 
literal  sense  of  the  term.  They  passed  away  when  their 
work  was  done,  and  the  only  successors  they  left  were 
the  ruling  and  teaching  estate  of  the  presbyters.  This 
survived  as  a  permanent  order  of  officers  in  the  Church, 
and  as  the  main  element  in  securing  its  organic  per- 
petuity. 

By  a  body  of  these  presbyters,  and  formally  "  with 
the  laying  on  of  their  hands,"  Timothy  was  put  in 
charge  with  his  gift  as  a  Christian  minister.  It  is  said, 
indeed,  in  the  Second  Epistle  addressed  to  him  by  Paul 
(ch.  1,  v.  6),  "I  put  thee  in  remembrance  that  thou  stir 


8  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

up  the  gift  of  God  which  is  in  thee,  by  the  putting  on*  of 
my  hands."  But,  whatever  this  may  mean,  it  is  certain 
it  cannot  contradict  the  other  declaration.  Paul's  hands 
must  still  have  been  put  upon  Timothy  in  such  a  way 
as  should  leave  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the  presby- 
tery possessed  of  its  full  force  and  effect,  as  the  instru- 
mentality by  which  he  received  his  gift.  And  this  will 
be  the  case  if  we  suppose — either  that  Paul  refers  here 
to  some  imposition  of  hands,  performed  by  him,  upon 
Timothy,  in  order  to  communicate  to  him  those  extraor- 
dinary gifts  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which  we  know  were,  in 
the  primitive  Church,  often  in  that  way  conferred  upon 
believers;  or  that  Paul,  being  an  elder  as  well  as  an 
apostle,  like  Peter  and  John,  had  taken  part  with  the 
presbytery  in  ordaining  Timothy  to  the  ministry.  Either 
of  these  suppositions  is  probable,  and  makes  the  saying, 
that  Timothy's  gift  was  communicated  by  the  putting  on 
of  Paul's  hands,  consistent  with  the  other  saying,  that  it 
was  communicated  by  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the 
presbytery ;  while,  if  we  suppose  that  it  was  the  putting 
on  of  Paul's  hands  alone  which  communicated  the  gift, 
we  shall  make  completely  void  the  declaration  that  it 
was  with  the  laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the  presbytery 
that  he  received  it.  It  is  altogether  inadmissible,  there- 
fore, to  suppose  that  Timothy  was  ordained  by  Paul 
alone ;  it  is  perfectly  consistent  to  suppose  that  he  was 
ordained  by  the  presbytery. 

And  now,  being  ordained  so,  he  became  a  presbyter, 
— a  bishop, — and  was  capable  of  joining  in  communi- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  9 

eating  the  gift  be  had  received  to  others.  Accordingly, 
the  apostle  enjoins  him,  in  his  Second  Epistle,  "  The 
things  that  thou  hast  heard  of  me,  among  many  wit- 
nesses,"— perhaps  the  very  things  addressed  to  him,  in 
the  presence  of  the  presbytery,  on  the  occasion  of  his 
ordination,  —  "the  same  commit  thou  to  faithful  men, 
who  shall  be  able  to  teach  others  also;"  and  in  another 
place,  he  admonishes  him  to  "lay  hands  suddenly,"  or 
hastily,  "upon  no  man."  This  power  of  perpetuating 
the  ministry  by  the  ordination  of  faithful  men,  lay  in 
the  hands  of  the  presbytery  after  the  apostles  were 
gone,  as  it  had  lain  in  their  hands  while  they  were 
living,  and  lay  in  their  hands  as  a  function  common 
to  them  all.  For  we  read  of  no  distinction  among  pres- 
byters in  the  New  Testament.  Up  to  the  time  when 
the  ISTew  Testament  history  closes,  we  have  every  reason 
to  conclude  that  the  record  in  ordinary  cases  of  any 
other  minister's  ordination  would  have  been  in  the  same 
form  as  that  of  Timothy's,  "with  the  laying  on  of  the 
hands  of  the  presbytery;"  and  we  have  no  reason  to 
conclude  that  it  would  have  been  in  any  other  form. 
And  ecclesiastical  history  for  the  first  two  centuries 
gives  us  no  reason:  to  conclude  that  the  record  of  such 
an  event  within  that  period  would  have  been  in  any 
other  form.  After  that  period,  indeed,  we  fiud  a  change. 
The  parity  of  presbyters  was  invaded;  the  monarchical 
principle,  borrowed  from  the  familiar  and  imposing  con- 
stitutions of  State  government,  was  engrafted  upon  the 
polity  of  the  Church ;  and  an  order  of  officers  claiming 


10  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

to  be  superior  to  the  presbyter,  and  holding  in  their 
hands  the  sole  right  to  ordain,  began  to  appear.  This 
change,  in  the  course  of  ages,  culminated  in  the  Pri- 
macy of  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  as  the  head  of  the  uni- 
versal Church;  and  with  the  exception  of  such  small 
bodies  of  Christians  as  the  Waldenses  and  Albigenses, 
who  seem  never  to  have  acknowledged  the  Bishop  of 
Rome,  and  never  to  have  abandoned  the  theory  of  the 
parity  of  presbyters  and  the  right  of  presbytery  to  or- 
dain,— with  this  exception,  the  ordaining  power  was  con- 
ceded to  be  a  function  of  that  order  of  which  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  claimed  to  be  chief. 

The  Reformation  in  the  sixteenth  century  was  an 
effort,  on  the  part  of  that  portion  of  the  Church  which 
participated  in  it,  to  throw  off  the  excrescences  of  various 
sorts  which  had  accumulated  upon  its  faith  and  prac- 
tice, and  recover  the  position  and  organic  structure  in- 
dicated for  it  in  the  Scriptures.  It  was  a  reformation, 
because  it  undertook  to  restore  to  the  Church  the  form 
prescribed  for  it  in  the  word  of  God.  In  this  move- 
ment, one  of  the  first  steps  was  to  assert  the  suprem- 
acy of  presbyters,  as  the  only  order  of  ministers  suc- 
ceeding to  the  apostles,  and  to  reinvest  them  with 
their  original  right  to  practice  ordination.  Those  of  the 
Reformers  who  were  ecclesiastics  had  received  ordina- 
tion in  the  Church  which  they  sought  to  reform,  from 
the  hands  of  men  who,  whatever  they  claimed  to  be 
more  than  presbyters  which  they  were  not,  were  never- 
theless  presbyters,  and  so  formally  could  ordain.     Em- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  ]\ 

powered  by  this  ordination,  they  in  their  turn,  as  pres- 
byters, ordained  others;  and  so  the  succession,  taking 
again  the  channel  marked  out  for  it  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament, has  flowed  on  from  the  Reformed  Churches  of 
the  Continent  of  Europe,  which,  as  they  ceased  to  be 
Papal,  invariably  became  Presbyterian,  to  Scotland  and 
England,  and  thence  to  these  American  shores.  The 
historical  current  by  which  any  man  receiving  ordi- 
nation to  the  Christian  ministry,  by  a  lawful  presby- 
tery, may  trace  the  conveyance  of  his  gift  from  apostolic 
times,  can  thus  unequivocally  and  consistently  be  shown; 
and  he  has  a  right  to  assume  that  his  gift  has  been  con- 
veyed to  him  by  that  current,  without  being  required 
to  perform  the  natural  impossibility  of  marking,  as  on 
a  map,  every  inch  and  every  turn  of  its  channel.  He  has 
a  right  to  say,  when  taunted  with  the  question,  "Where 
was  your  Church  before  the  time  of  Luther?"  or  other 
similar  ones,  "It  was  in  the  time  of  the  apostles  ;" — "  it 
was  in  the  days  which  the  Scripture  history  covers, — the 
oldest  and  the  most  authentic  of  the  periods  of  Church 
history;" — "it  was  in  the  plan  of  His  kingdom,  which 
God  in  the  beginning  drew  by  the  finger  of  His  Spirit 
on  the  pages  of  His  word."  He  has  a  right  to  say, 
when  charged  with  exercising  an  unauthorized  ministry, 
"I  stand  on  the  same  ground  with  Timothy;  on  ground 
farther  back  and  higher  up  than  that  defined  by  tradi- 
tion, or  the  writings  of  the  Fathers  ;  on  ground  where 
Paul,  in  all  his  apostolic  authority  and  infallibility, 
appears  indorsing  the  act  of  the  presbytery  who  by  the 


12  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

imposition  of  their  hands  invested  his  disciple  with  the 
ministerial  office." 

I  shall  perhaps  be  excused  for  this  exposition,  if  any 
excuse  is  necessary,  when  I  remark  that  twenty-live 
years  ago,  almost  to  a  day,  I  was,  by  an  agency  and  au- 
thority of  precisely  the  species  I  have  been  describing,  or- 
dained in  this  house  to  the  office  of  the  gospel  ministry. 
The  "gift"  that  is  in  me,  as  an  officer  in  the  Church  of 
God,  was  then  given  me  by  "prophecy,"  or  what  I  re- 
garded as  intimations  of  the  Divine  will,  and  "  with  the 
laying  on  of  the  hands  of  the  presbytery."  I  was,  of 
course,  satisfied  then  that  the  commission  with  which  I 
was  charged  was  an  authentic  one.  The  studies,  the  re- 
flections, and  the  observations  of  subsequent  years  have 
only  confirmed  me  in  this  conviction.  The  grounds 
upon  which  that  commission  claimed  to  be  authentic 
have  been  canvassed,  sifted,  attacked,  and  defended  innu- 
merable times,  and  the  result  of  all  these  processes  has 
been,  to  my  mind  at  least,  to  make  more  manifest  the 
exact  coincidence  of  these  grounds  with  the  facts,  the  pre- 
cedents, and  the  teachings  of  Scripture.  And,  with  the 
Scripture  as  my  warrant,  I  have  felt  that  I  was  in  posses- 
sion of  the  surest,  the  most  complete,  and  the  most  an- 
cient title  to  my  office  which  was  attainable  in  the  case. 
I  have  felt,  in  accepting  the  gift  of  the  ministry  through 
the  channel  by  which  it  was  conveyed  to  me,  that  I  was 
not  taking  that  honor  unto  myself,  but  receiving  a  call 
from  God  to  it,  as  was  Aaron.  And  in  this  confidence  I 
have  continued  in  all  good  conscience,  as  a  genuine  pres- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  13 

byter  iii  the  Church,  to  bear  authoritative  testimony  to 
the  truths  of  the  gospel,  to  exercise  rule  in  the  house  of 
God,  to  administer  the  sacraments,  to  take  part  in  the 
councils  of  the  Church,  and  to  join  in  the  laying  on  of 
hands  upon  others  who  were  to  he  initiated  into  the  min- 
istry, from  the  day  of  my  ordination  till  now.  In  the 
due  appreciation  of  the  "gift"  conferred  upon  me,  I 
have  not  failed ;  in  the  proper  exercise  of  it,  I  am  only 
too  conscious  of  being  guilty  in  many  ways  of  that  "neg- 
lect" against  which  the  apostle  cautions  Timothy. 

As  will  have  been  observed  from  the  remarks  just 
made,  my  introduction  to  this  church  was  signalized  not 
merely  by  an  act  of  installation  by  which  I  was  set  over 
it  as  its  pastor,  but  by  an  act  of  ordination  by  which  I 
was  inducted  into  the  ministerial  office.  When  I  came 
to  this  congregation,  in  the  latter  part  of  May,  1843,  I 
came  simply  as  a  licentiate  of  the  Presbytery  of  Philadel- 
phia, under  the  care  of  which  body,  from  the  fact  that 
my  residence  for  a  number  of  years  prior  to  my  adop- 
tion of  the  ministry  as  my  profession  had  lain  within  its 
bounds,  I  had  placed  myself.  A  few  months  before  the 
period  fixed  for  the  closing  of  my  studies  at  the  Theo- 
logical Seminary  at  Princeton,  the  school  in  which  I 
received  my  training,  and  which  was  presided  over,  at 
the  time,  by  such  masters  in  divinity  as  Drs.  Archibald 
Alexander,  Samuel  Miller,  Charles  Hodge,  and  Joseph 
Addison  Alexander,  I  had  been  authorized  by  Presbytery 
to  preach  as  opportunity  offered,  according  to  that  wise 
provision  of  our  Church  by  which   "the  brethren"  of  the 


14  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

household  of  faith  are  invoked  to  form  and  pronounce 
their  judgment  in  aid  of  that  of  the  Presbytery,  as  to  the 
possession  by  a  candidate  of  those  gifts  which  indicate 
that  he  has  been  called  of  God  to  the  ministry.  From 
the  halls  of  this  school,  after  having  preached,  I  think, 
only  on  four  or  five  occasions,  I  proceeded  directly  to 
this  city,  in  pursuance  of  an  invitation  some  time  pre- 
viously addressed  to  me  by  the  Session  of  this  church. 
I  came  less  a  stripling  in  years  than  in  appearance ;  but  a 
veritable  stripling  in  the  arts  of  spiritual  championship, 
having  on  such  armor  as  I  had  been  able  to  acquire 
during  a  course  of  three  years'  study,  but  all  unpracticed 
in  the  use  of  that  armor.  I  came  because  the  junctures 
of  Providence  had  seemed  to  open  the  path  before  me, 
and  without  a  wish  or  purpose  in  my  mind  except  to 
learn  the  issue  to  which  that  path,  in  the  ordering  of 
Providence,  was  to  lead  me.  That  issue  was  indicated 
by  the  warm-hearted  welcome  extended  to  me,  and  the 
favorable  temper  in  which  my  labors  were  received  by 
the  people,  and  chiefly  by  the  presentation  to  me,  on  the 
12th  day  of  June,  less  than  four  weeks  after  my  arrival, 
of  a  unanimous  call  to  become  their  pastor.  To  a  call 
presented  under  such  circumstances,  there  seemed  to  be 
only  one  response  to  be  given ;  and,  accordingly,  in  the 
course  of  the  summer,  from  my  home  in  !New  Jersey, 
whither  I  had  returned  in  July,  I  announced  to  the  con- 
gregation my  acceptance  of  it.  It  was  not  until  Novem- 
ber of  that  year,  1843,  that  I  was  able  to  assume  the 
charge  of  the  post  so  assigned  me.     In  that  month  I 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  15 

began  the  residence  in  Natchez,  which  has  continued 
ever  since.  The  Presbytery  of  Mississippi,  to  which  this 
church  belonged,  convened  in  this  city  in  the  latter  part 
of  December,  and,  after  sustaining  my  qualifications  for 
the  pastoral  office,  by  the  various  trials  prescribed  in  our 
Form  of  Government,  proceeded,  on  Sabbath  the  31st, 
to  administer  the  rite  of  ordination.  On  that  occa- 
sion, by  appointment  of  the  Presbytery,  the  Rev.  Jere- 
miah Chamberlain,  D.D.,  President  of  Oakland  College, 
preached  an  appropriate  sermon  from  Heb.  xiii.  17 : 
"  For  they  watch  for  your  souls,  as  they  that  must  give 
account;"  and  the  Rev.  William  Montgomery,  the  ven- 
erable patriarch  of  the  Presbytery,  made  the  ordaining 
prayer,  and  took  the  lead  in  the  imposition  of  hands. 
The  installation  service  followed  immediately;  and  the 
close  of  these  solemnities  found  me  charged  with  that 
double  "gift,"  of  the  Christian  ministry  and  the  pastor- 
ship of  this  church,  which,  under  God's  peculiar  bless- 
ing, I  have  been  permitted  to  exercise  for  the  succeeding 
twenty-five  years. 

These  personal  reminiscences  are  related  with  some 
diffidence;  but  this  is  my  apology  for  them,  that  the 
history  of  the  church  hangs  necessarily  very  much  upon 
the  thread  of  my  own  history,  and  with  very  many  of 
my  hearers  the  facts  I  am  relating  belong  to  a  period  of 
which  they  can  have  no  recollection,  and  may  serve,  by 
ministering  to  their  intelligence,  to  quicken  also  their 
interest  in  the  church  of  their  fathers. 

At  the  time  of  my  coming  to  Natchez,  the  condition  of 


1(3  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

the  city  was  not  unlike  that  in  which  we  find  it  at  the 
present  moment.  It  was  just  recovering  from  the  effects 
of  a  wide-spread  and  disastrous  commercial  collapse,  by 
which  its  enterprise  had  been  paralyzed  and  its  wealth 
almost  annihilated.  This  crisis,  as  it  is  common  to  call 
such  phenomena,  occurred  during  the  years  1837  and 
1838,  and  left  the  country  in  a  state  of  virtual  bank- 
ruptcy. In  close  succession  upon  this  financial  con- 
vulsion, the  memorable  tornado  of  May  7,  1840,  had 
visited  the  city  and  laid  it  to  a  great  extent  in  ruins. 
Impoverished  by  the  destruction  of  property,  embar- 
rassed by  debts  of  almost  fabulous  magnitude,  bewil- 
dered by  the  general  failure  of  public  and  private  securi- 
ties, and  immersed  in  litigation,  the  community  found 
itself  thrown,  with  a  suddenness  which  has  been  hardly 
exceeded  in  the  strange  experiences  of  recent  times,  from 
a  plethora  of  prosperity  into  an  extreme  of  exhaustion. 
As  a  consequence,  the  tide  of  population  and  business, 
for  a  series  of  years,  continued  to  ebb  away  from  Nat- 
chez. This  depletion  would  doubtless  have  been  fatal,  had 
it  not  been  that  the  intrinsic  and  inalienable  resources 
of  the  country  are  such  as  enable  its  inhabitants  almost 
to  command  wealth,  and  such  as  endow  them  with  a  re- 
cuperative power  which  no  conceivable  check  can  en- 
tirely subvert.  It  was  not  fatal,  but  in  time  yielded  to 
the  effects  of  a  patient  development  and  husbanding  of 
these  resources;  and  I  have  been  allowed  since  to  see,  in 
the  homes  of  this  city  and  neighborhood,  as  marked  an 
exhibition  of  general  comfort  and  opulence  as  perhaps 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  17 

the  world  could  show.  The  heavy  pressure  of  adversity, 
however,  was  here  when  I  begau  my  ministry,  and  the 
church,  like  every  other  interest,  felt  its  blight.  One  of 
the  evidences  of  this  was  that,  although  considerable 
accessions  were  made  to  its  membership  every  year, 
for  a  long  time  no  increase  of  its  numerical  force  ap- 
peared, by  reason  of  the  frequent  dismissions  granted 
to  persons  removing  to  other  places  of  residence. 

The  Presbyterian  Church  at  Natchez,  at  the  time  I 
became  its  pastor,  had  been  in  existence  twenty-six 
years, — its  organization  having  been  practically  effected 
in  1817,  by  the  enrollment  of  eight  persons  as  members. 
The  Rev.  Daniel  Smith,  a  clergyman  from  New  Eng- 
land, who  had  been  laboring  as  a  domestic  missionary  in 
the  community  for  more  than  a  year,  was  invited  to  min- 
ister to  it  as  a  stated  supply;  and  John  Henderson,  Jos. 
Forman,  Richard  Pearce,  and  ¥m.  B.  Noyes  were  or- 
dained as  its  bench  of  ruling  elders.  To  this  body 
Samuel  S.  Spencer  was  added  in  1818.  Steps  had  been 
taken  as  early  as  1810  for  the  erection  of  a  Presbyterian 
house  of  worship ;  and  in  1812  the  corner-stone  of  the 
building  was  laid.  It  was  a  brick  structure,  located  on 
the  spot  where  our  present  church  stands.  It  was  dedi- 
cated in  February,  1815.  The  engagement  with  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Smith  having  terminated  in  1819,  the  Rev.  William 
"Weir,  a  native  of  Ireland,  was  elected  pastor,  and  on  the 
31st  of  March,  1820,  was  installed  by  the  Mississippi 
Presbytery.      This   gentleman,  therefore,  was   the   first 

2 


18  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

regular  pastor  of  this  church.  He  is  remembered  by 
some  few  of  our  aged  citizens,  and  is  spoken  of  as  a  man 
of  learning,  of  great  purity  of  character,  and  eminently 
zealous  in  his  work.  His  period  of  labor,  however,  was 
a  short  one,  his  death  having  occurred  on  the  25th  of 
November,  1822.  The  square  marble  tomb  which  marks 
the  spot  of  his  sepulture  may  still  be  found  in  a  neg- 
lected lot  which  belongs  to  the  church  in  our  city  ceme- 
tery. 

The  second  pastor  of  the  church  was  the  Rev.  George 
Potts,  who,  like  myself,  first  visited  Natchez  as  a  licen- 
tiate of  the  Presbytery  of  Philadelphia.  Having  been 
subsequently  ordained  by  that  Presbytery,  he  was  in- 
stalled pastor  by  the  Presbytery  of  Mississippi  in  Decem- 
ber, 1823.  The  number  of  communicants  at  this  time 
was  forty-nine.  The  first  donations  reported  to  have 
been  made  by  this  congregation  were  in  the  year  1825, 
and  consisted  of  twenty  dollars  to  the  "  Missionary 
Fund,"  and  thirty  dollars  to  the  "Education  Society." 
In  the  beginning  of  1825,  Samuel  Postlethwaite  was  or- 
dained as  a  ruling  elder, — a  man  distinguished  for  his 
urbanity  as  a  gentleman  and  for  his  integrity  as  a  Chris- 
tian, and  a  fine  type  of  that  band  of  merchants  who  in 
the  earlier  times  of  Natchez  made  their  class  noble.  In 
1828,  the  church-edifice  originally  erected  being  found 
inconvenient,  the  trustees  resolved  to  erect  a  new  one, 
which  work  was  in  the  course  of  the  next  two  years  suc- 
cessfully effected.  This  second  building  was  the  original 
of  the  one  we  now  occupy,  and  was  dedicated  on  the 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  19 

first  Sabbath  of  January,  1830,  just  thirty-nine  years  ago. 
The  pastorate  of  Mr.  Potts  terminated  in  November, 
1835,  having  continued  thirteen  years.  His  removal 
from  Natchez  was  occasioned  by  his  acceptance  of  a  call 
from  the  Duane  Street  Church  in  the  city  of  New  York. 
He  left  a  communion-list  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-five 
persons.  During  his  incumbency  another  addition  had 
been  made  to  the  ruling  eldership,  in  the  person  of  Dr. 
Andrew  Macrery. 

The  successor  of  Air.  Potts,  was  the  Rev.  Samuel  G. 
Winchester,  a  native  of  Baltimore,  and  previously  pastor 
of  a  church  in  Philadelphia.  His  installation  took 
place  on  the  24th  day  of  December,  1837.  The  bench 
of  elders  having  been  reduced  by  deaths  and  removals  to 
two  members, — the  venerable  John  Henderson  and  Dr. 
Macrery, — the  congregation  elected  to  that  office  Thomas 
Henderson,  William  Pearce,  and  Franklin  Beaumont, 
who  were  ordained  on  the  25th  of  February,  1838.  In 
the  year  following,  the  church-building  was  repaired, 
and  its  means  of  accommodation  enlarged  by  the  intro- 
duction of  the  galleries  which  are  at  present  standing. 
About  the  same  time  the  very  neat  and  commodious 
parsonage  belonging  to  the  church  was  purchased  for 
the  use  of  the  pastor.  Mr.  Winchester's  labors  were 
brought  to  a  close  unexpectedly  by  his  death,  in  August, 
1841,  while  he  was  absent  at  the  North,  whither  he  had 
gone  as  Commissioner  to  the  General  Assembly,  which 
met  that  year  in  Philadelphia.  It  was  my  privilege,  on 
one  occasion,  to  hear  him  preach  in  his  former  church  in 


20  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

Spruce  Street,  in  that  city,  during  the  sessions  of  the  As- 
sembly. I  had  no  personal  acquaintance  with  him,  but 
had  gone  to  hear  him,  attracted  merely  by  his  reputa- 
tion. I  listened,  thus,  to  the  tones  of  his  voice  after  they 
had  uttered  their  last  counsels  and  exhortations  in  the 
ear  of  his  flock  in  Natchez.  How  strange  the  provi- 
dence which  had  ordered  it  that  the  unknown  student 
who  was  listening  that  day  to  the  eloquent  preacher, 
dreaming  far  more  of  being  a  missionary  to  China 
than  the  successor  of  him  to  whom  he  was  listening, 
should  be  that  successor!  During  Mr.  Winchester's 
ministry  the  number  of  communicants  increased  to  two 
hundred  and  three;  and  among  the  contributions  given 
by  the  church  in  1838,  I  find  one  for  Foreign  Missions 
amounting  to  $2508,  and  another  for  Domestic  Missions 
amounting  to  $2054. 

In  assuming  the  charge  intrusted  to  me  as  the  fourth 
regular  pastor  of  this  church,  I  was  assuming,  I  need 
hardly  say,  to  one  in  my  circumstances,  a  work  of  no 
little  magnitude.  Indeed,  when  I  recall  the  amount  of 
labor  of  mind  and  spirit  and  body  that  I  was  compelled 
to  undergo  during  the  first  ten  years  of  my  ministry,  I 
am  amazed  that  I  am  here  to-day  to  refer  to  it.  I  do  not 
wish  to  magnify  the  hardships  of  my  office  with  any  pa- 
thetic intent,  but  I  do  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  give 
some  adequate  impression  of  the  trials  and  toils  compre- 
hended in  such  a  position  as  I  have  filled  in  this  com- 
munity, in  order  to  blunt  the  edge  of  those  complaints 
of  shortcomings  in  duty  which  are  frequently  directed 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  21 

against  the   clerical   profession,   and  which   I  have   no 
reason  to  suppose  I  have  escaped. 

The  claims  of  the  pulpit  must  ever  present  themselves 
to  the  young  minister  as  most  formidable  in  their  dimen- 
sions. And  they  ought  to  do  so.  For  an  ambassador  of 
Christ  to  treat  his  message  with  levity  is  sadly  out  of  har- 
mony with  his  demand  that  his  hearers  should  hear  it 
as  though  "  God  did  beseech"  them  by  him.  These 
claims  necessarily  involve  an  application  of  mind,  in  the 
way  of  research  and  reflection,, of  the  severest  kind.  And 
then  they  are  incessant  and  inexorable  in  their  exactions. 
As  soon  as  one  effort  is  concluded,  another  must  be  pre- 
pared for.  "The  inevitable  hour"  when  the  congrega- 
tion must  have  its  lecture  or  discourse,  and  must  have  it 
whether  the  preacher  be  in  frame  or  out  of  frame,  is 
always  impending  over  him.  Entertaining  the  views 
which  I  held  of  obligation  on  this  subject,  and  haunted 
always,  perhaps  criminally,  certainly  painfully,  with  a 
feeling  of  self-distrust,  the  work  of  preparing  for  the 
pulpit,  with  me,  has  been  an  arduous  one.  I  have  been 
accustomed,  as  you  are  aware,  in  my  Sabbath  preaching, 
to  make  a  large  use  of  the  pen.  Sometimes  in  my  earlier 
ministry  I  felt  constrained  to  depend  upon  this  alto- 
gether. The  draft  upon  a  clergyman's  time,  created  by 
this  practice,  I  am  coming  more  and  more  to  think, 
should  be  avoided  by  such  training  as  may  qualify  him  to 
preach  without  the  labor  of  literal  composition.  Pur- 
suing the  plan  which  I  have  adopted,  and  which  it  is  not 
easy  now  to  depart  from,  I  have  written  out  completely  at 


22  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

least  six  hundred  discourses  of  different  kinds  during  the 
twenty-five  years  of  my  pastorate  in  this  place. 

A  minister,  again,  at  a  central  point  like  this,  will  find 
his  duties  as  a  presbyter  extending  beyond  the  circle  of 
his  own  charge.  And  as  one  result  of  this  he  will  have  a 
large  amount  of  correspondence  thrown  upon  his  hands. 
I  have  found  that  one  day  in  each  week,  and  often  two, 
were  required  for  this  species  of  work. 

Then  the  maintaining  of  an  intercourse  with  the  indi- 
viduals and  families  of  his  flock,  is  a  part  of  his  duty 
which  allows  a  pastor  no  rest.  Although  he  may  know 
that  his  rule  here,  as  in  all  things,  is  "  to  study  to  show 
himself  approved  unto  God,"  he  knows,  too,  that  his 
people  expect  him  to  show  himself  approved  unto  them. 
He  may  know,  as  is  the  case  in  a  charge  as  extensive  as 
this,  that  it  is  impossible  to  satisfy  the  wishes  of  his  peo- 
ple without  sacrificing  every  other  department  of  his 
work;  but  the  reflection  that  he  is  not  satisfying  them 
will  be  iu  his  mind  like  a  goad,  driving  him  forward,  and 
yet  always  tormenting  him  with  the  consciousness  of  fall- 
ing behind  the  required  measure  of  performance. 

Then  the  casual  services  which  are  demanded  of  him 
in  connection  with  the  wants,  the  troubles,  and  the  afflic- 
tions of  the  community  in  which  he  ministers — services 
which  are  indefinitely  various,  which  may  spring  upon 
him  at  the  most  inopportune  moment,  and  which  are 
sometimes  inconsiderately  imposed  —  constitute  a  tax 
upon  time,  upon  thought,  and  often  upon  feeling,  of  the 
most  exhaustive  nature. 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  23 

Then  the  teacher  who  is  constantly  teaching,  must 
seek  to  be  constantly  taught.  He  must  keep  himself  in- 
formed, that  he  may  inform  others.  He  needs  the  oppor- 
tunity and  the  freedom  of  mind  required  for  study ;  not 
merely  such  as  shall  furnish  him  for  an  exercise,  but 
such  as  shall  make  him  generally  intelligent. 

And  then,  lastly,  he  has  the  same  infirmities,  the  same 
inaptitudes  and  indispositions,  clogging  his  movements, 
which  other  men  feel,  and  under  which  they  usually  in- 
dulge themselves  with  a  cessation  from  labor;  and  he 
has  the  same  kind  and  the  same  measure  of  household 
responsibilities  claiming  his  attention  and  burdening  his 
mind,  which  other  men,  encompassed  with  domestic  ties, 
have. 

Amid  a  set  of  obligations,  exactions,  and  obstructions 
like  this,  I  was  called  to  make  my  way  when  I  took 
charge  of  the  pastorate  of  this  congregation.  And  I  was 
called  to  make  it  too,  I  may  add,  very  much  alone ;  for, 
from  the  sparseness  of  our  churches  in  this  region,  I 
have  enjoyed  to  a  very  limited  extent  the  benefit  of  in- 
tercourse with  ministerial  brethren.  It  ought  not  to  be 
surprising  if  in  making  that  way  I  have  often  erred, 
often  been  chargeable  with  that  "neglect"  which  the 
apostle  forbids  in  his  exhortation  to  Timothy;  and  for  all 
such  delinquencies,  in  view  of  the  statements  just  made, 
I  think  I  have  not  been  unreasonable  in  expecting  at  the 
hands  of  my  flock  that  kind  toleration  which  I  can  say 
they  have  generally  been  disposed  to  extend  to  them. 

I  ought  not  to  overlook  to-day  the  remarkable  good- 


24  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

ness  of  God,  in  the  almost  uninterrupted  enjoyment  of 
health  which  has  been  vouchsafed  to  me  during  my  long 
ministry  in  this  place.  As  nearly  as  I  can  remember,  I 
have  been  prevented  by  sickness  from  performing  the 
regular  duties  of  the  Sabbath — if  I  except  the  greater  part 
of  the  year  1859,  when,  from  general  exhaustion  termi- 
nating in  a  slight  organic  derangement,  I  was  obliged  to 
suspend  public  speaking — but  three  times  during  twenty- 
five  years.  I  have  been  exposed  within  that  period  to 
five  epidemic  seasons,  some  of  them  marked  by  great 
malignity  in  the  prevailing  disease;  but,  though  in  daily 
and  almost  hourly  contact  with  the  pestilence,  it  has  not 
been  permitted  to  touch  me. 

I  cannot,  and  I  ought  not  to,  forget,  however,  as  my 
thoughts  retrace  the  path  along  which  I  have  been  led, 
that  if  goodness  and  mercy  have  followed  me  in  this 
respect,  I  have  not  failed,  in  others,  to  experience  the  dis- 
cipline of  sorrow.  My  early  years  in  Natchez  were  dark- 
ened by  the  heaviest  affliction  which  ever  throws  its 
shadow  on  the  heart  of  man.  When  we  begin  to  count 
off  our  quarter-centuries,  it  will  seem  to  most  of  us,  I 
imagine,  that  we  have  passed  through  a  series  of  dif- 
ferent worlds  in  the  course  of  our  living.  In  one  of  those 
distant  worlds,  a  world  lit  once  with  the  sunshine  of 
youthful  romance,  there  hangs  a  cloud,  fixed  immovably 
in  the  dim  horizon.  Under  the  influence  of  it,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  probably,  I  have  passed 
through  the  whole  of  my  subsequent  ministerial  life. 
Perhaps,  as  I  was  to  stand  by  so  many  sorrowing  ones 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  25 

and  help  tliem  to  drink  their  bitter  cups,  it  was  not 
without  a  purpose  that  I  was  made  to  drink  such  a  cup 
first, — that  I  was  made  to  taste  a  sorrow  which  goes  down 
to  the  bottom  of  all  human  sorrows.  If,  as  has  so  often 
happened,  I  have  had  to  say  to  the  soul  adrift  on  the  wild 
ocean  of  grief,  "Jesus  is  near;  and  Jesus  can  help  you," 
it  is  because  on  such  an  ocean  I  have  myself  seen  Him 
present  and  realized  the  sustaining  power  of  His  grace. 
And  if,  to  the  heart  asking,  in  the  desolation  which  the 
removal  of  its  dearest  object  has  wrought,  "What  have  I 
now  to  live  for?"  I  could  hold  up  the  claims  of  Jesus, 
and  give  the  counsel,  "To  me  to  live  is  Christ,"  and  not 
feel  that  I  was  mocking  the  anguish  of  the  bewildered 
questioner,  it  was  because  I  had  myself  received  that 
counsel  from  the  lips  of  dying  love,  and  had  found  that 
life  still  had  a  value  in  it,  so  long  as  it  could  be  conse- 
crated to  Christ. 

At  the  commencement  of  my  pastorship  the  number 
of  communicants  on  the  roll  of  the  church  was  two  hun- 
dred and  six.  Since  that  time  there  have  been  added 
five  hundred  and  thirty-two,  of  whom  four  hundred  and 
three  were  admitted  upon  profession  of  their  faith. 
"Within  the  same  period  one  hundred  and  eleven  have 
died,  and  three  hundred  and  twenty-eight  have  been  dis- 
missed to  other  churches  or  have  been  stricken  from  the 
roll.  The  drain  upon  the  membership  each  year,  by 
deaths  and  dismissions,  has  almost  kept  pace  with  the 
accessions ;  so  that,  although  there  has  been  a  constant 
growth  in  the  church,  the  number  of  communicants  at 


26  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

present  recognized  is  only  two  hundred  and  ninety-one. 
The  largest  number  on  the  roll  at  any  one  time  within 
the  period  of  my  ministry  was  three  hundred  and  five. 
The  largest  number  of  additions  made  in  any  one  year 
was  made  in  1858,  when  an  unusual  interest  in  religion 
affected  this  community  in  common  with  most  of  the 
country,  and  we  had  the  pleasure  of  receiving  into  the 
church  ninety-four  new  members,  most  of  them  upon 
profession  of  their  faith.  The  Sabbath  in  that  year, 
June  6,  on  which  the  Session  introduced  to  you,  in  one 
body,  sixty-nine  persons  who  had  been  adopted  into  your 
Christian  family,  and  the  rite  of  baptism  was  adminis- 
tered to  twenty  of  them,  will  doubtless  be  recalled  by 
most  of  you  as  a  day  memorable  in  your  history.  It 
was  a  day  which  brought  to  many  of  your  homes  a 
"great  joy,"  like  that  which  prevailed  in  the  city  of  Sa- 
maria, and  a  demonstration,  coupled  with  that  joy,  that 
the  same  Spirit  which  wrought  the  miracle  of  Pentecost 
was  still  present  and  still  active  in  the  world,  and  could 
still  be  depended  on  to  bless  the  preaching  of  the  gospel 
and  to  answer  the  prayers  of  the  Church. 

The  statement  just  made,  that  during  the  past  twenty- 
iive  years  only  four  hundred  and  three  persons,  under 
my  ministry,  have  been  found  willing  openly  to  avow 
themselves  as  believers  in  Christ,  is  one  which  at  first 
view  is  humiliating  and  disheartening.  It  seems  a  small 
ingathering  to  reward  the  laborer  who  has  in  one  field 
borne  the  burden  and  the  heat  of  so  long  a  day.  Still, 
the  eye  of  the  Saviour  rested,  apparently,  not  so  much 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  27 

upon  masses  as  upon  single  souls ;  and  His  ministers, 
where  they  cannot  see  crowds  won  to  the  obedience  of 
the  faith,  must  magnify  the  worth  of  the  single  souls 
whom  they  may  have  aided  to  bring  to  Christ,  and  must 
feel,  like  the  angels,  that  there  is  occasion  for  joy  in  the 
fact  that  even  one  sinner  repenteth.  I  confess,  however, 
that  were  it  not  for  the  assurance  I  have,  that  my  influ- 
ence has  operated  for  good  in  ways  that  I  have  not 
known  and  perhaps  ought  not  to  know,  and  will  con- 
tinue to  operate  after  I  have  passed  from  my  field  of 
labor,  I  should  be  oppressed  with  a  profound  sadness  as  I 
survey  the  results  of  my  ministry  to-day. 

With  a  few  items  more  I  will  close  this  first  part  of  my 
sketch  of  a  quarter-century's  pastorship. 

I  have  baptized  six  hundred  persons, — one  hundred 
and  two  adults  and  four  hundred  and  ninety-eight  infants. 
I  have  solemnized  the  rites  of  matrimony  two  hundred 
and  fifty  times ;  and  in  several  of  these  instances  the  par- 
ties have  been  the  children  of  those  whom  I  had  pre- 
viously united  in  marriage.  I  have  conducted,  or  as- 
sisted in  conducting,  five  hundred  and  fifteen  funerals. 
In  the  performance  of  this  last  most  trying  part  of  a  min- 
ister's duty  I  have  been  called  to  enter,  as  it  seems  to 
me,  most  of  the  homes  of  this  city  and  the  vicinity  for 
miles  in  every  direction;  and  I  have  established  a  sad 
link  of  association  between  my  office  and  the  family  his- 
tory of  most  of  those  among  whom  I  live.  I  have  fol- 
lowed to  their  graves  a  large  number  of  those  who  were 
the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  generation  now  before  me; 


23  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

and  were  I  to  repeat  their  names  the  list  would  include 
almost  every  one  who  has  helped  to  make  the  society  of 
Natchez  as  reputable  ami  its  traditions  as  honorable  as 
they  confessedly  are.  In  it  would  be  found  nine  of  my 
ministerial  brethren  ;  four  of  the  Methodist  Church,  one 
of  whom  was  the  venerated  Carson,  so  long  the  St.  John 
of  our  city;  one  of  the  Episcopal  Church, — the  gifted 
Chaclburne,  who  fell  a  victim  to  the  yellow  fever  of  1853, 
whom  I  had  visited  and  prayed  with  in  his  sick-room,  and 
at  whose  burial  I  read  the  service  of  his  Church ;  and  four 
of  my  own  Church,  one  of  whom  was  the  beloved  spirit- 
ual father  by  the  putting  on  of  whose  hands  I  had  been 
inducted  into  my  office, — Dr.  Chamberlain,  whose  tragical 
death  in  September,  1851,  will  be  remembered  by  many 
of  you,  and  in  memory  of  whom  I  preached  a  sermon  at 
the  request  of  the  Trustees  of  the  College  over  which  he 
presided ;  and  another  was  the  Rev.  Benjamin  H.  Wil- 
liams, for  years,  as  the  pastor  of  the  Pine  Ridge  Church, 
my  nearest  neighbor,  and  always  my  dearest  friend,  who 
died  in  Vicksburg  (where  he  had  become  pastor  of  the 
Presbyterian  Church)  of  the  epidemic  of  1855,  and  in 
testimony  of  whose  worth  I  also,  at  the  request  of  his 
congregation,  pronounced  a  funeral  discourse. 

In  reviewing  the  records  which  I  have  preserved  of 
these  solemn  ceremonials,  and  passing  from  them,  by  a 
natural  transition,  to  the  numerous  death-chambers  I 
have  had  to  visit,  I  seem  almost  to  have  dropped  the 
tie  of  identity  with  the  living  present  and  to  be  encom- 
passed with  the  population  of  a  past  world,  —  a  spec- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  29 

tral  population,  whose  feet  I  had  helped  to  guide  to  the 
borders  of  that  spirit-laud  into  which  they  were,  one  by 
one,  passing.  And  I  can  aver  to  you,  my  friends,  with 
all  honesty,  and  with  the  intensest  emphasis,  that  the 
testimony  which  I  derive  from  my  converse  with  this 
silent  and  shadowy  throng  is  all  in  favor  of  that  religion 
which  for  twenty-five  years  I  have  been  engaged  in 
recommending  to  you. 

Is  it  argued  by  the  preacher  that  this  life  is  too  in- 
secure, too  unsubstantial,  to  be  pursued  as  the  portion  of 
the  soul  ?  My  reminiscences  tell  me  that  the  argument 
is  good.  I  have  seen  the  fact  affirmed  most  abundantly 
demonstrated.  I  have  observed  that  death  is  ever  at 
hand  to  defeat  the  best-laid  schemes  and  blast  the  most 
rational  hopes  of  man.  I  have  seen  him  again  and 
again  selecting  as  his  victims  the  very  ones  who,  we 
would  have  said,  ought  not  to  die,  and  could  not  die.  I 
have  seen  him  cut  down  with  his  remorseless  scythe  the 
fairy  child,  the  maiden  in  the  pride  of  her  beauty,  the 
minister  of  God  in  the  midst  of  his  usefulness,  the  mother 
with  her  little  flock  living  upon  her  love,  and  the  father 
holding  up  his  dependent  household  by  his  providence 
and  care.  I  have  seen,  in  one  of  our  epidemic  summers, 
a  young  mechanic,  whose  energy  and  probity  had  opened 
for  him,  as  he  supposed,  a  sure  avenue  to  wealth,  and 
the  bride  whom  he  had  brought,  in  her  ruddy  girlhood, 
a  few  months  before,  to  his  neat  little  home,  both 
almost  at  the  same  hour  prostrated  by  the  fever,  torn 
from  one  another  and  from  all  earthly  objects  by  the 


30  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

stupor  in  which  he  was  wrapped  and  the  delirium  which 
had  seized  upon  her.  and  reunited  only  when  death 
came,  in  less  than  two  days,  and  again  almost  at  the 
same  hour,  to  bear  them  both  to  the  presence  of  God, — 
and  in  one  burial  a  few  of  us  laid  them,  side  by  side,  in  the 
same  grave.  That  incident,  and  hundreds  of  others,  of 
the  same  import,  though  less  striking  in  their  details, 
have  taught  me  that  the  man  who  makes  the  world  his 
trust  is  the  grandest  madman  who  ever  built  a  costly 
house  upon  a  foundation  of  sand. 

Is  it  argued  by  the  preacher  that  the  way  of  the  trans- 
gressor is  hard  ?  I  have  seen  this  verified,  when  I  have 
seen  the  drunkard,  after  throwing  away  talents  which 
might  have  made  him  reputable,  and  wrecking  the 
hearts  of  those  who  loved  him,  going  to  his  early  grave; 
when  I  have  seen  the  man  of  violence  groaning  in  re- 
morse on  his  bloody  death-bed ;  when  I  have  seen  the 
criminal  shuddering  in  his  cell,  in  terror  of  the  gallows 
to  which  his  crimes  had  brought  him;  and  when  I  have 
seen — for  I  have  seen  this  too — the  tenant  of  the  house 
of  shame  closing  her  life  of  vice  in  the  agonies  of  de- 
spair. "When  I  have  seen  these,  and  a  hundred  other 
spectacles,  implying  the  same  doctrine,  though  less 
marked  in  form,  I  have  been  satisfied  that  the  wages  of 
sin,  from  first  to  last,  is  death. 

And  is  it  argued  by  the   preacher  that   godliness  is 

profitable  unto  all  things,  having  promise  of  the  life  that 

now  is,  and  of  that  which  is  to  come  ?     A  long  proces- 

ion  of  beautiful  characters,  graced  with  the  piety  of  the 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  31 

gospel,  and  radiant  habitually  with  the  peace  which 
trust  in  Jesus  and  love  to  God  had  inspired,  rises  before 
me.  And  a  long  series  of  scenes,  in  which  these  charac- 
ters, after  demonstrating  the  genuineness  of  their  faith  by 
their  patience  in  suffering,  had  calmly,  joyfully  fallen 
asleep  in  the  arms  of  their  Saviour,  to  waken  in  His  like- 
ness and  in  His  presence  in  heaven,  comes  to  light  on 
the  pages  of  my  memory;  and  when  I  think  of  them,  I 
am  sure  the  apostle  was  right  when  he  called  Christ  and 
His  salvation  God's  "  unspeakable  gift ;"  when  he  de- 
scribed the  faith  of  the  believer  as  a  "precious"  faith; 
and  when  he  professed  himself  willing  to  "  count  all 
things  but  loss,  for  the  excellency  of  the  knowledge  of 
Christ  Jesus  his  Lord." 

And  it  is  not,  I  ask  you  to  notice,  a  testimony  fur- 
nished merely  by  the  exercises  and  phenomena  which 
attend  the  actual  moments  of  death,  to  which  I  thus 
refer, — for  I  know  only  too  well  that  such  exercises  may 
be  specious  and  such  phenomena  illusory;  but  I  hold  Up 
that  testimony  before  you,  as  founded  upon  this  broad 
induction,  this  absolute  fact, — that  I  have  never  stood  by 
a  death-bed,  in  the  whole  course  of  my  twenty-five  years' 
ministry,  which  did  not  make  it  unequivocally  evident 
that  the  party  dying  had  made  an  infinite  mistake  if  he 

HAD  NOT  LIVED — A  CHRISTIAN. 


PAET    SECOND. 


"And  he  gave  some,  apostles ;  and  some,  prophets ;  and  some,  evan- 
gelists ;  and  some,  pastors  and  teachers  ;  for  the  perfecting  of  the  saints, 
for  the  work  of  the  ministry,  for  the  edifying  of  the  body  of  Christ." — 
Eph.  iv.  11,  12. 


It  is  a  solemn  and  affecting  view  of  the  subject  which 
the  apostle  here  presents,  that  the  overseers  and  in- 
structors of  the  Church  are  "a  gift"  to  it  by  its  as- 
cended Head ;  and  that  the  work  of  these  officers  in  the 
Church  is  the  perfecting,  that  is,  the  rectifying  and  com- 
pleting, of  His  "saints,"  or  chosen  ones,  and  the  serving 
and  edifying,  or  the  nourishing  and  rearing  up,  of  His  own 
"  body."  It  teaches  us  what  the  world,  in  its  prevalent  un- 
belief, is  ever  prone  to  forget, — that  the  policy  of  Heaven 
enters  intimately,  in  many  ways,  into  the  policy  of  earth ; 
and  it  reminds  us  that  in  our  treatment  of  what  are 
called  the  institutions  of  human  society  we  may  be 
touching,  reverently  or  profanely,  the  ordinances  of  God. 

It  will  be  my  business  to-day  to  show  to  some  extent 
how  far  the  pastorate  and  the  membership  of  this  church 
have  appreciated  and  discharged  their  reciprocal  obliga- 

3  (33) 


34  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

tions  during  the  past  twenty-five  years.  Resuming  the 
thread  of  my  narrative  at  the  point  where  I  dropped  it 
in  my  last  discourse,  I  may  remark  that  at  my  assump- 
tion of  my  pastorship,  at  the  close  of  the  year  1843,  I 
found  in  office  only  three  of  the  five  ruling  elders  who 
had  been  associated  with  my  predecessor.  John  Hender- 
son, who  is  entitled  perhaps  more  than  any  other  to  the 
name  of  the  founder  of  this  church,  who  continued  to 
take  the  deepest  interest  in  its  welfare  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  and  who  was  a  conspicuous  example  of  the  piety  he 
sought  to  promote, — like  Enoch,  "walking  with  God," 
and  like  Abraham,  "  commanding  his  children  and  his 
household  after  him," — had  died  in  1841;  so  that  it  was 
never  my  privilege  to  know  him.  Dr.  Andrew  Macrery 
I  met  on  my  first  visit  to  Natchez,  in  the  spring  of  1843. 
He  was  then  venerable  in  years,  and  broken  by  infirmi- 
ties, and  before  my  return  to  the  South,  in  the  fall,  had 
gone  to  his  rest.  In  the  three  surviving  members  of  the 
Session,  Thomas  Henderson,  William  Pearce,  and  Frank- 
lin Beaumont,  I  found  kind  and  indulgent  friends,  able 
and  ready  to  aid  my  inexperience  with  their  sympathy 
and  counsels.  In  the  first-named  of  the  three  I  had 
an  invaluable  coadjutor, —  one  upon  whose  sage  judg- 
ment I  always  leaned  with  confidence;  while  he,  in  his 
humility  and  his  veneration  for  the  office  I  bore,  was 
ever  disposed  to  sit  at  my  feet  as  a  little  child. 

With  a  Session  of  this  limited  constituency,  the  affairs 
of  the  church  were  conducted  quietly  and  prosperously 
for  the  next  four  years.     In  the  spring  of  1848,  Messrs. 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  35 

Pearce  and  Beaumont  having  removed  from  Natchez, 
the  former  to  Louisiana,  and  the  latter  to  Texas,  where 
they  are  still  living,  it  became  necessary  to  replenish  the 
eldership.  Accordingly,  the  congregation,  at  a  meeting 
held  February  13,  1849,  elected  to  that  office  Dr.  John 
Ker,  Samuel  B.  Newman,  and  James  Carradine,  who 
were  subsequently,  on  the  27th  of  May  following,  or- 
dained. Dr.  Ker's  services  were  soon  withdrawn  from 
the  church.  He  died  suddenly,  on  the  4th  of  January, 
1850,  universally  respected  and  lamented  by  the  com- 
munity. He  had  been,  to  a  degree  unusual  with  the 
class  of  planters  to  which  he  belonged,  a  public-spirited 
man.  That  extravagant  term,  "the  soul  of  honor," 
sometimes  applied  to  the  favorites  of  the  crowd,  could 
perhaps  without  extravagance  have  been  applied  to  him, 
if  by  it  we  mean  a  character  marked  by  pure  and  liberal 
principles,  by  an  undeviating  regard  for  justice  and  pro- 
bity, and  by  a  spontaneous  and  infinite  detestation  of  all 
wrong-doing  and  all  mean-doing;  for  this  he  eminently 
possessed.  He  was  the  patron  of  every  good  cause,  the 
friend  and  benefactor  of  the  people,  and  at  one  period  of 
his  life  served  the  city  of  Natchez  as  its  representative  in 
the  Legislature.  In  his  religion  he  was  as  honest  and 
as  earnest  as  he  was  in  everything  else.  It  was  a  rare 
spectacle  to  see  one  who  had  grown  up  among  the  loose 
practices  and  opinions  of  the  early  society  of  Mississippi, 
and  who  had  been  exposed  to  the  temptations  of  wealth 
and  popularity,  as  he  had  been,  receiving  with  meekness 
the  engrafted  word  of  Christ,  and  then,  in  meekness  of 


36  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

wisdom,  carrying  out  its  precepts  as  he  did;  and  there- 
fore, and  because  I  had  perpetual  experience  of  his 
paternal  kindness  from  the  first  hour  of  my  arrival  in 
Natchez,  I  pay  this  loving  tribute  to  his  worth  and 
memory  to-day. 

As  early  as  1845,  in  the  second  year  of  my  ministry,  I 
had  begun  to  give  a  portion  of  the  Sabbath  to  the  re- 
ligious instruction  of  the  colored  population  of  the  city. 
Previously,  with  the  exception  of  occasional  services 
rendered  by  clergymen  of  the  Methodist  Church,  no- 
thing had  been  done,  under  the  auspices  of  our  local 
churches,  for  the  evangelization  of  this  portion  of  the 
community.  A  service  was  opened  for  them  in  the 
building  formerly  standing  in  the  rear  of  this  church, 
and  remembered  by  many  of  you  as  the  "Session-house;" 
and  I  continued  to  preach  to  them  on  the  night  of  each 
Sabbath,  after  preaching  twice  to  my  regular  congrega- 
tion, more  or  less  for  a  period  of  six  years.  This  effort 
was  attended  with  the  most  gratifying  success.  The  con- 
gregations increased  from  year  to  year,  until  the  place 
became  altogether  too  strait  for  them.  The  services  I 
performed  among  this  people  were,  in  some  respects,  the 
most  satisfactory  of  any  that  belong  to  my  public  minis- 
trations. The  pulpit,  in  their  presence,  has  fewer  of 
those  temptations  to  self-seeking  which  in  other  cases 
are  liable  to  disturb  the  purity  and  simplicity  of  the 
preacher's  purpose ;  and  the  gospel  in  their  hearing, 
addressing  a  class  of  minds  where  the  affections  pre- 
ponderate over  the  thoughtful  judgment  and  the  sober 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  37 

intelligence,  is  apt  to  be  listened  to  with  an  openness  of 
heart,  and  a  responsive  sensibility,  which  are  rare  in 
other  assemblies.  The  attractiveness  of  these  Sunday- 
night  meetings  drew  to  them  many  of  my  white  congre- 
gation ;  and  I  shall  recall  to  some  of  you,  I  know,  by 
this  allusion,  many  an  occasion  in  which,  in  sympathy 
with  the  crowd  before  you,  you  have  felt  that  the  truths 
of  Christianity  had  a  strange  power,  and  the  plaintive 
numbers  of  the  sweet  hymn,  "There  is  rest  for  the 
weary,"  and  the  stirring  notes  even  of  that  ruder  one, 
"The  old  ship  of  Zion,"  have  raised  your  souls  to  a  glow 
of  devotional  tenderness  or  exhilaration  akin  to  that 
which  the  finest  chant  of  cathedral  choristers  might  have 
inspired.  And  the  influence  of  these  services,  I  am  satis- 
fied, was  not  ineffectual  for  good.  Many  from  this  class 
were  added  to  the  Church;  and  a  faithful  walk  has  de- 
monstrated, of  some  of  them  at  least,  that  they  were 
neither  insincere  nor  mistaken  in  professing  themselves 
Christians.  I  have  seen  too  many  instances  among  them 
of  faith  working  by  love  and  purifying  the  heart,  of  piety 
leading  to  correctness  of  life  and  respectability  of  char- 
acter, to  allow  me  to  doubt  that  the  grace  of  the  gospel, 
notwithstanding  the  peculiar  disadvantages  it  has  in  their 
case  to  encounter,  can  still  among  them,  as  among  others, 
convert  the  natural  man  into  a  new  creature  in  Christ. 
The  increasing  size  of  this  congregation  made  it  evident 
that  enlarged  accommodations  should  be  provided  for 
them ;  and  accordingly,  in  1848,  measures  were  adopted 
for  the  erection  of  a  new  house  of  worship. 


38  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

The  wants  of  the  Sunday-school,  at  the  same  time,  in- 
dicated the  necessity  of  this  step.  The  Sabbath-school 
enterprise  seems  to  have  been  inaugurated  in  Natchez 
in  the  year  1817,  about  the  time  of  the  organization  of 
this  church.  It  was,  at  its  inception,  conducted  upon 
the  union  plan, — most  or  all  of  the  Protestant  congrega- 
tions participating  in  it;  and  the  meetings  of  the  school 
were  held  in  the  Baptist  church.  The  first  superin- 
tendent was  Israel  Spencer,  a  member  of  this  church, 
still  living,  and  holding  the  office  of  ruling  elder  in 
the  church  at  Port  Gibson.  I  had  the  opportunity,  not 
long  since,  of  hearing  this  venerable  and  beloved  father 
revert  to  his  labors  in  this  department  at  that  early  day, 
when  the  aged  men  and  women  of  the  present  were  the 
boys  and  girls  of  this  city.  Very  soon  after  the  com- 
mencement of  Mr.  Potts's  ministry,  —  about  the  year 
1824, — it  was  thought  best  to  establish  a  separate  school, 
under  the  direction  of  the  Presbyterian  Church.  Of  this 
school  Samuel  Postlethwaite  became  the  superintendent. 
He  was  succeeded  by  Absalom  Pettit;  he,  by  Obadiah 
Congar;  and. he,  by  Alvarez  Fisk,  whose  interest  in  the 
youth  of  Natchez  was  at  a  later  day  attested  by  those 
benefactions  which  laid  the  foundation  of  our  excellent 
"  Institute."  Mr.  Fisk  was  succeeded  in  1829  by  Thomas 
Henderson,  who  continued  to  preside  over  the  school  till 
his  death  in  1863.  His  successor  was  James  Carradine, 
the  present  superintendent.  It  has  been  my  custom, 
from  the  beginning  of  my  ministry,  to  visit  this  school 
occasionally,  and  for  many  years  to  do  so  regularly  each 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  39 

month,  and  to  conduct  an  examination  of  the  children  in 
the  Catechism.  During  this  period  I  can,  therefore,  bear 
intelligent  testimony  to  the  excellence  of  the  system  of 
instruction  which  has  prevailed  in  it;  and  I  have  seen 
the  result  of  it,  I  have  no  doubt,  in  the  large  number  of 
these  children  who,  in  their  mature  years,  have  united 
themselves  with  the  Church.  The  condition  of  the  school 
at  the  present  epoch  is  eminently  prosperous, — its  roll, 
including  teachers  and  scholars,  numbering  about  three 
hundred.  It  is  a  valuable  auxiliary  to  the  work  of  the 
pastor;  and  the  advantages  which  it  offers  in  the  way  of 
religious  culture  are  such  as  no  parent  who  is  not  sure 
that  he  is  accustomed  to  supply  this  in  a  better  or  at 
least  in  as  good  a  form  at  home,  ought  to  deny  to  his 
children. 

The  growth  of  this  institution,  coupled  with  the  wants 
of  the  colored  congregation,  as  just  intimated,  suggested 
the  expediency  of  erecting  a  building  suited  to  the  pur- 
poses of  both.  With  this  object  in  view,  the  edifice  at 
the  corner  of  Pearl  and  Washington  Streets,  known  as 
"the  Chapel,"  was  constructed  during  the  course  of  the 
year  1848.  On  the  12th  of  April,  1849,  it  was  dedicated. 
Since  that  time,  this  commodious  building,  having  twice 
narrowly  escaped  destruction  by  fire,  has  been  the  fami- 
liar place  of  resort  of  the  congregation  at  all  their  weekly 
and  occasional  meetings.  It  has  been  identified  with  the 
history  of  the  city  in  its  various  mutations,  having  been 
the  spot  where  the  people  of  all  denominations  have  been 
wont  to  gather  in  their  times  of  public  interest,  to  join 


40  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

in  their  thanksgivings  or  to  lift  up  their  cries  for  deliver- 
ance to  God. 

During  the  summer  of  the  same  year,  1849,  a  spacious 
and  elegant  study  was  erected  on  the  parsonage-grounds, 
for  the  benefit  of  the  pastor;  a  project,  I  may  remark, 
which  originated  with,  and  was  largely  paid  for  by,  the 
young  ladies  of  the  "Oakly  School,"  at  that  time  under 
the  care  of  Miss  D.  Postlethwaite. 

Two  years  later,  in  1851,  the  size  of  the  church-edifice 
having  become  inadequate  to  meet  the  wants  of  the  con- 
gregation, it  was  determined  to  enlarge  it.  This  was 
done  by  removing  the  old  "  Session-house,"  purchasing 
an  adjoining  lot  of  ground,  and  extending  the  building 
sixteen  feet  in  the  rear,  which  gave  it  the  dimensions 
and  general  appearance  that  it  possesses  to-day.  In 
the  course  of  the  next  year  the  handsome  iron  railing 
which  surrounds  the  church-premises  was  set  up.  The 
expense  to  the  congregation  of  erecting  the  chapel  and 
study  and  improving  the  church  was  about  $13,000. 
The  fresco-work  with  which  the  latter  is  internally 
adorned  was  added  in  1859. 

In  September,  1851,  partly  to  relieve  the  pastor  of  the 
charge  of  the  colored  congregation  and  partly  to  supply 
the  destitutions  of  our  suburban  population,  a  city  mis- 
sion in  connection  with  this  church  was  established,  and 
the  Rev.  Daniel  McNair  invited  to  conduct  it.  In  ad- 
dition to  the  colored  congregation  in  the  chapel,  Mr. 
McNair  immediately  opened  a  place  of  worship,  and  a 
Sabbath-school,  in  a  hired  room  on  the  extreme  of  St. 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  41 

Catherine  Street.  Mr.  McNair's  efforts  in  this  field  con- 
tinued till  May,  1855 ;  and,  as  the  result  of  them,  a  mani- 
fest improvement  took  place  in  the  habits  of  the  commu- 
nity among  whom  he  labored,  an  interesting  Sabbath- 
school  was  collected,  and  a  number  of  persons  were 
gathered  into  the  communion  of  this  church.  Mr.  McNair 
was  succeeded  by  the  Kev.  Joseph  Weeks  in  1855,  and 
he  by  the  Rev.  Thomas  H.  Cleland  in  1856. 

In  this  year  it  was  resolved  by  the  trustees  of  this 
church  to  erect  a  house  of  worship  for  the  Mission  Con- 
gregation; and,  accordingly,  the  tasteful  edifice  at  the 
corner  of  Pine  and  Jefferson  Streets  was  built  during 
1857,  and  dedicated  February  28,  1858.  The  cost  of 
this  building  and  of  a  parsonage  connected  with  it  was 
about  $10,000.  In  the  fall  of  1858,  the  Mission  Congre- 
gation having  been  received  by  the  Presbytery  of  Missis- 
sippi as  "the  Second  Church  of  Natchez,"  forty  persons 
from  this  church  were  set  off  to  form  its  membership, 
ruling  elders  were  elected,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Cleland  was 
chosen  as  stated  supply.  In  1860  the  house  of  worship 
and  parsonage  provided  for  the  Second  Church  were 
conveyed  as  a  gift  to  the  trustees  of  that  corporation  by 
the  trustees  of  the  First  Church ;  though,  I  may  remark, 
the  salary  of  the  minister  continued,  till  the  dissolution  of 
the  Second  Church,  to  be  paid  mainly  by  the  First 
Church.  Mr.  Cleland  retained  his  position  till  the  close 
of  the  year  1862,  when  he  removed  to  another  charge. 
Subsequently  to  his  departure,  owing  to  the  distracted 
condition  of  the  country,  the  dispersion  of  members,  and 


42  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

the  death  and  removal  of  the  ruling  elders,  it  was  found 
impossible  to  sustain  the  church  in  active  existence ;  and 
a  year  ago,  the  trustees  having  reconveyed  the  property 
to  the  First  Church, .  it  was  declared  dissolved  by  the 
Presbytery,  and  the  remaining  members  were  directed  to 
connect  themselves  with  the  First  Church.  The  prop- 
erty has  since  been  sold,  and  the  church  is  now  owned 
and  used  by  a  society  of  the  Colored  Methodist  Church. 

This  enterprise  is  thus  noted  because  it  was  one  in 
which  this  congregation,  at  the  time,  took  a  large  inter- 
est, and  one  which,  notwithstanding  its  early  extinction, 
was  productive  of  great  public  good,  and  deserves  to  be 
put  on  record  as  a  testimony,  for  the  generation  to  come, 
of  the  evangelic  zeal  and  the  "  mind  to  work"  which 
characterized  their  fathers. 

The  liberality  of  the  congregation  was  exhibited  also, 
I  may  add,  about  the  same  period  in  which  it  was  exe- 
cuting these  larger  schemes,  in  the  expenditure,  in  1856, 
of  the  sum  of  $3852  in  repairing  and  enlarging  the  par- 
sonage. I  find  that  within  the  ten  years  extending  from 
1850  to  1860  the  sums  contributed  by  this  church,  in 
various  ways,  for  religious  and  benevolent  objects, 
amounted  to  $148,434, — a  fact  which  will  serve  to  show 
the  high  grade  of  prosperity  to  which  the  country  had 
advanced,  and,  at  the  same  time,  the  readiness  of  a  part 
at  least  of  the  people  to  consecrate  their  wealth  to  the 
service  of  God.  This  period  may  probably  be  taken  as 
the  palmy  decade  in  the  history  of  the  church, — when  it 
could  have  been  said  of  its  members,  as  of  the   early 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  43 

Church,  "the  multitude  of  them  that  believed  were  of 
one  heart  and  of  one  soul;  neither  said  any  of  them  that 
aught  of  the  things  which  he  possessed  was  his  own;" 
and  "walking  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  in  the  comfort 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  they  were  multiplied." 

In  January,  1853,  the  church  sustained  a  heavy  loss  in 
the  dismissal  of  Samuel  B.  Newman,  one  of  its  ruling 
elders,  to  the  Prytania  Street  Church  in  New  Orleans,  to 
which  city  he  had  removed  his  residence.  The  eldership 
beins:  now  reduced  to  two  members,  an  addition  to  it 
was  made  by  the  election  of  L.  M.  Patterson,  Oren  Met- 
calf,  Alexander  J.  Postlethwaite,  and  Thomas  C.  Pollock 
on  the  29th  of  June,  1855 ;  who,  having  accepted  the 
office,  were  duly  ordained  on  the  8th  of  July  following. 

No  additions  have  since  been  made;  but  death  has  not 
suffered  the  little  band  of  seven  who  then  constituted  the 
Session  of  the  church,  and  for  a  series  of  years  were  ac- 
customed to  hold  fraternal  counsel  together  and  join  in 
prayer  and  deliberation  in  behalf  of  the  flock  of  which 
they  were  overseers,  to  remain  unbroken  until  now.  On 
the  6th  of  March,  1863,  Thomas  Henderson,  after  hav- 
ing served  the  church  as  a  ruling  elder  for  twenty-five 
years  and  as  superintendent  of  the  Sabbath-school  for 
thirty-four  years,  departed  this  life ;  and  on  the  3d  of  De- 
cember, 1866,  Alexander  J.  Postlethwaite  followed  him 
to  the  grave. 

Of  these  brethren  beloved,  from  the  freshness  of  the 
sense  of  bereavement  in  my  own  breast,  and  from  my 
reluctance  to  open  wounds  in  the  hearts  of  many  who 


44  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

hear  me,  I  am  almost  afraid  to  say  what  I  think  and 
know.  But  I  am  giving  testimony,  to-day,  from  a  posi- 
tion which  I  shall  never  occupy  again ;  and  it  seems  to 
me  I  should  leave  the  history  of  my  pastorate  incom- 
plete if  I  did  not  signalize  the  privilege  I  have  enjoyed 
in  heing  associated  with  such  men.  Besides,  our  de- 
parted friends,  though  dead,  yet  speak  to  us  when  we 
speak  to  one  another  of  them ;  and  it  is  wrong,  unjust 
to  our  faith,  to  clothe  the  death  of  the  Christian  with  re- 
pulsive attrihutes,  or  avoid  a  recurrence  to  it,  as  if  it  were 
a  mere  calamity. 

The  obligations  which  this  church  is  under  to  these 
two  men  will  never  be  known  on  earth.  They  were 
both  distinguished  for  modesty, — obscured,  I  may  say, 
by  the  retiringness  of  their  disposition  and  habit;  and 
the  world  was  almost  as  ignorant  of  the  extent  of  their 
excellence,  as  the  soil  in  which  the  diamond  lies  buried 
is  of  the  value  of  the  gem  it  incloses.  Both  showed, 
throughout  the  whole  of  their  Christian  life,  that  the 
type  of  their  piety  had  been  drawn,  reverently  and  im- 
plicitly, from  the  Scriptures.  They  had  not  speculated  a 
religion  into  existence  for  themselves.  They  had  not 
been  accustomed  to  say,  "  I  believe  this  or  that  to  be 
true,  because  I  wish  it  to  be  true,  or  because  I  think  it 
ought  to  be  true."  But,  hushing  their  own  wishes  and 
thoughts,  they  bowed  to  the  majesty  of  God's  word; 
gave  it  the  credit  of  absolute  truth ;  informed  themselves 
of  its  contents;  drank  of  it  as  their  spiritual  drink;  ate 
of  it  as  their  spiritual  food ;  and  so  became  the  healthy 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  45 

and  symmetrical  Christians  they  were, — with  their  con- 
sciences illuminated,  and  their  hearts  sanctified,  till  their 
thoughts  approved  and  their  wishes  accepted  just  what 
God's  word  revealed,  and,  like  the  Psalmist,  they  could 
say,  "  How  sweet  are  thy  words  unto  my  taste !  yea, 
sweeter  than  honey  to  my  mouth  !"  Both  had  a  breadth 
and  a  depth  of  heart  which,  from  their  unostentatious 
temperament,  would  not  have  been  suspected  by  those 
who  were  not  brought  into  intimate  contact  with  them. 
Though  governed  strictly  by  a  regard  for  duty,  they  were 
not  the  mechanical  servants  of  law.  Though  attached  to 
the  church  to  which  they  belonged,  they  knew  nothing 
of  the  blindness  or  exclusiveness  of  ecclesiastical  partisan- 
ship. Though  rooted  and  grounded,  like  the  tree's  trunk, 
in  the  doctrines  of  the  gospel,  they  showed  the  efflores- 
cence and  the  fruitage  of  the  tree's  bough,  in  the  affec- 
tions of  the  gospel  which  adorned  their  characters  and 
their  lives.  The  "love  of  Christ,"  as  apprehended  by 
them,  "constrained"  them;  and,  under  the  inspiration  of 
this  apprehension,  they  loved  Christ  first, — then  loved 
the  Church  which  He  had  redeemed,  —  and  then  the 
world  for  which  He  had  died.  I  do  not  wish  to  say  any- 
thing extravagant;  and  therefore  I  do  not  say  that  they 
did  not  have  their  defects,  and  that  they  did  not  some- 
times fall  into  errors.  But  I  well  remember  how,  on 
one  occasion,  happening  to  hear  a  cynical  skeptic 
railing  at  the  Church  and  denouncing  professors  of 
religion  as  hypocrites,  when  I  asked  him  the  question, 
"Did  you  ever  know  Thomas  Henderson?"  he  dropped 


46  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

his  head,  and  murmured,  "Yes, — yes:  he  was  a  Chris- 
tian !" 

Mr.  Henderson's  long  connection  with,  and  prominence 
in,  the  church,  and  his  position  in  the  mercantile  and 
social  world,  made  his  influence  to  he  widely  felt  and 
his  worth  to  be  generally  known.  The  gifts  which  he 
had  received  from  nature,  and  which  had  been  cultivated 
by  education  only  to  a  limited  extent,  were  wonderfully 
developed  and  expanded  by  the  anointing  from  above 
which  had* been  conferred  upon  him;  so  that,  in  per- 
spicacity of  mind,  in  the  well-balanced  movement  of  his 
judgment,  in  his  clear  discernment  of  the  principles  of 
rectitude  and  the  forms  and  proportions  of  truth,  in  the 
propriety  and  felicity  with  which  he  performed  the  duties 
of  his  office,  in  the  way  of  public  prayer  or  exhortation, 
he  had  very  few  superiors.  His  talents  forced  him,  in  a 
measure,  out  of  that  retirement  which  he  sought;  and 
the  Church  at  large  asked,  in  various  ways,  the  benefit  of 
his  services.  He  was  for  many  years  one  of  the  vice- 
presidents  of  the  American  Colonization  Society;  from 
its  foundation,  a  trustee  of  Oakland  College,  our  sy- 
nodical  institution  ;  a  frequent  member  of  our  local  eccle- 
siastical councils;  and  on  several  occasions  a  Commis- 
sioner from  his  Presbytery  to  the  General  Assembly. 
His  liberality  was  princely,  or  rather,  let  me  say,  Chris- 
tian-like. The  needy  of  all  classes  went  to  him  for  aid, 
without  reserve;  and  the  readiness  with  which  it  was 
dispensed  revealed  the  principle  upon  which  he  uni- 
formly acted,  that  in  the  disbursement  of  his  wealth  he 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  47 

was  discharging  a  stewardship  intrusted  to  him  by  the 
Lord.  He  contributed  to  the  religious  and  benevolent 
enterprises  of  the  Church  on  a  scale  which  far  out- 
stripped the  rate  at  which  Christians  ordinarily  estimate 
their  obligations;  and  the  benefactions  he  dispensed  are 
working  to-day  in  the  leavening  power  which  Chris- 
tianity is  exercising  in  all  parts  of  this  land,  and  living 
in  the  schools  and  churches  which  are  springing  up  over 
the  world  on  heathen  soil.  And,  yet,  so  carefully  was 
this  outflow  of  his  liberality  ordered, — that  it  might  be 
a  sacrifice  to  God,  and  not  to  his  own  fame, — that,  so  far 
as  such  a  thing  could  be,  it  was  kept  from  the  eye  of 
man;  and  perhaps  no  one  but  God  ever  knew  its  full 
extent.  When  he  died,  the  population  of  the  city  were 
his  mourners;  and  over  the  community,  and  the  church, 
and  the  family, — with  an  intensity  increasing  as  each  of 
these  circles  grew  less, — there  hung  a  stifling  sense  of 
loss,  as  if  a  presence  which  had  been  a  safeguard  and  a 
blessing  to  them  all,  had  been  withdrawn  from  them. 

Mr.  Postlethwaite's  term  of  service  and  sphere  of  influ- 
ence were  more  contracted;  but  during  that  term  and 
within  that  sphere  I  have  never  known  a  man  in  whom 
the  "willing  mind" — the  first  requisite  of  the  Christian 
laborer — was  more  conspicuously  displayed.  With  him 
the  expression  "ye  are  not  your  own"  was  more  than  a 
theoretic  formula.  He  realized  it  in  his  deepest  con- 
sciousness, and  he  acted  in  accordance  with  it  in  his  out- 
ward life.  Totally  free  from  guile,  or  the  craft  which 
ceaselessly  revolves  about  self,  his  supreme  desire  was  to 


48  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

be  useful, — to  help  others  to  be  happy.  Ou  every  inch 
of  earth  which  his  hand  could  till,  he  sought  to  plant  a 
flower.  His  abilities  were  given,  often  with  a  severe  cost 
to  his  own  comfort,  to  the  Church;  and  in  many  a  private 
mission  of  his  own,  with  which  his  nearest  friends  were 
hardly  acquainted,  he  bore  his  charities  to  the  poor  and 
his  consolations  to  the  sick  and  the  bereaved.  He  died 
in  his  prime;  called,  we  know  not  why,  to  higher  forms 
of  that  pious  ministry  he  had  so  loved  while  present  with 
us. 

In  closing  what  I  shall  have  to  say  in  regard  to  the 
eldership  of  this  church,  I  cannot  but  remark,  when  I 
recall  the  seventeen  who  have  borne  this  office,  that  the 
gift  of  such  men  as  some  of  them  were,  and  are,  is  a 
token  of  special  favor,  by  its  great  Head,  to  the  Church. 
Pillars  indeed  we  may  call  them,  in  the  house  of  the  Lord, 
having  in  them  the  strength  of  granite  and  the  beauty 
of  alabaster.  And  when  I  hear  the  man,  outside  of  the 
Church,  making  his  flippant  fling  at  the  hollowness  of  the 
piety  inside  of  the  Church,  I  point  to  these  men,  and 
ask  if  the  presence  of  such  wheat  is  not  proof  that  the 
piety  of  the  Church  is  the  growth  of  a  Divine  planting, 
sufficient  to  outweigh  all  the  evidence  to  the  contrary 
which  the  presence  of  the  tares  to  be  found  in  it  can 
afford. 

It  will  be  proper  now,  in  carrying  out  my  design,  to 
notice  briefly  some  of  the  ways  in  which  the  church  has 
recognized  its  relations  to  the  social  corporation  with 
which  it  has  been  identified,  and  has  promoted,  as  it  was 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  49 

its  duty  to  do,  the  good  of  the  community  in  which  it 
was  established. 

Not  to  speak  of  the  bearings  upon  the  intellectual 
character  and  habits  of  a  people,  of  a  ministry  of  the  spe- 
cies of  that  which  has  officiated  in  this  pulpit  and  come 
in  contact  with  the  minds  of  this  congregation  continu- 
ously for  a  period  of  fifty  years, — bearings  which  are  not 
often  acknowledged,  but  which  cannot  be  inconsiderable, 
—  I  would  affirm,  first,  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in 
Natchez,  that  it  has  always  lent  its  influence  to  the 
support  of  efforts  for  the  promotion  of  sound  popular 
education.  Believing,  as  we  do,  that  Christianity  con- 
templates man  as  a  rational  being,  that  it  proposes  to 
lead  him  to  eternal  life  through  the  knowledge  of  the 
true  God  and  of  Jesus  Christ  whom  He  has  sent,  and 
that  ignorance  is  the  mother  neither  of  devotion  nor  of 
morality,  but  of  superstition  and  vice,  we  have  every- 
where aimed  to  plant  the  school-house  alongside  of  the 
church,  and  to  elevate  the  intelligence  of  the  masses, 
that,  in  their  ability  to  think,  they  might  be  the  better 
able  to  understand  the  claims  of  Christianity.  One  of 
the  first  bench  of  ruling  elders  ordained  in  this  church, 
Richard  Pearce,  and  the  first  superintendent  of  the  Sab- 
bath-school, Israel  Spencer,  were  the  Principals  of  an  in- 
stitution of  learning,  the  first  of  which  there  is  any  re- 
cord in  Natchez.  During  my  acquaintance  with  the  city 
there  have  always  been  in  it  one  or  more  schools  of  a 
good  character  under  the  charge  of  persons  connected 
with  this  church.     At  one  time  there  were  in  existence 

4 


50  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

here  no  less  than  three  female  and  one  male  boarding- 
schools  under  such  supervision,  all  well  sustained  and  of 
a  high  order.  As  a  part  of  my  duty  as  a  member  of  the 
Synod  of  Mississippi,  I  have  been,  from  my  settlement  in 
the  country,  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Directors  and 
Trustees  of  Oakland  College,  an  institution  founded  by 
the  Presbyterians  of  the  Southwest  nearly  forty  years 
ago,  and  the  first  institution  of  the  kind  founded  south  of 
Tennessee.  The  endowment  of  this  college  came  largely 
from  this  congregation ;  and  one  individual  in  it,  who 
chose  to  be  unknown,  gave  $20,000  to  it  as  the  founda- 
tion of  a  Theological  Chair.  In  the  year  1845,  Natchez 
witnessed  the  opening  of  its  Common  school,  known 
ever  since,  and  most  honorably,  as  the  "Natchez  Insti- 
tute." The  enterprise  originated  with  the  late  Alvarez 
Fisk,  a  communicant  in  this  church,  who  had  previously 
offered  to  the  city  several  valuable  pieces  of  property 
upon  condition  that  the  corporation  would  establish  a 
school  for  the  gratuitous  education  of  the  youth  within 
its  limits.  The  gift  was  accepted ;  and,  in  pursuance  of 
a  resolution  adopted  by  the  people  at  a  public  meeting, 
an  ordinance  imposing  an  annual  tax  upon  the  citizens 
for  the  consummation  of  the  design  was  passed  by  the 
Common  Council.  Much  distrust  and  some  opposition 
in  reference  to  the  scheme  were  entertained;  and  with 
the  view  of  allaying  these,  and  under  the  conviction  that 
in  helping  forward  the  scheme  I  should  be  serving  the 
cause  of  Christ,  I  preached  a  sermon  in  this  pulpit,  April 
13,  1845,  from  the  text  (Hosea  iv.),  "  My  people  are  de- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  51 

stroyed  for  lack  of  knowledge," — in  which  I  urged  upon 
my  own  congregation,  on  religious  grounds,  the  duty  of 
sustaining  the  projected  school,  and  in  which  I  used 
the  following  language :  "  The  object  is  one  which  should 
enlist  our  conscientious  co-operation.  We  should  wel- 
come the  institution  proposed  to  be  established  amongst 
us,  as  a  legitimate  ally  in  the  work  of  human  salvation. 
If  it  is  properly  conducted,  it  is  adapted  to  fulfill  this 
office.  It  may  save  many  souls  from  ruin  whom  igno- 
rance would  otherwise  have  destroyed.  And  while  there 
is  a  possibility  of  its  doing  this,  while  it  is  free  to  act  as 
the  handmaid  of  religion,  it  is  entitled  to  receive  our 
warmest  countenance  and  support.  With  the  favor  of 
God  vouchsafed  to  it  in  answer  to  our  prayers,  genera- 
tions to  come  will  bless  us  for  the  pious  benefactions 
which  founded  it ;  and  a  fountain  will  be  opened  here, 
which  shall  join  with  countless  others,  in  all  lands,  in 
eventually  covering  the  earth  with  the  knowledge  of  the 
Lord,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea."  The  institution  was 
opened,  and,  through  the  favor  of  God  vouchsafed  to  it, 
has  continued  to  the  present  day.  It  has  never  had  any 
manner  of  relationship  to  this  church  or  any  other  church; 
but,  inasmuch  as  the  instruction  given  in  it  is  consonant 
with  the  teachings  of  Christianity,  and  as  all  true  knowl- 
edge is  favorable  to  the  ends  proposed  by  Christianity,  I 
have  always,  as  a  citizen,  watched  over  it  with  the  liveliest 
interest ;  and  as  an  evidence  of  this  I  may  add  that  I 
have  annually  been  a  member  of  the  Examining  Com- 
mittee, and  on  seven  or  eight  occasions  have  acted  as 


52  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

the  chairman  of  that  Committee  and  prepared  the 
Annual  Report  to  the  City  Council. 

I  make  this  allusion  to  the  Institute,  because  the  origin 
of  it  belongs  to  the  period  covered  by  my  ministry ;  and 
because  no  small  part  of  the  influence  by  which  it  has 
been  fostered  into  its  present  proportions  has  come  from 
this  congregation. 

I  claim,  in  the  next  place,  for  the  church  over  which  I 
preside,  that  it  has  always  been  active  in  supporting 
schemes  of  benevolence.  While  we  maintain  the  dis- 
tinctive ground  upon  which  the  Church  stands  as  a 
Divine  institute,  by  which  it  is  forbidden  to  own  a  parity 
to  itself,  on  the  part  of  any  merely  eleemosynary  society, 
we  hold  that  the  Church  is  bound  to  be  pre-eminently  an 
eleemosynary  society.  We  hold  it  to  be  a  part  of  pure 
and  undefiled  religion  "to  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows 
in  their  affliction,"  as  well  as  "to  keep  ourselves  unspotted 
from  the  world."  In  accordance  with  this  theory,  I  find 
a  number  of  persons,  who  afterward  composed  the  mem- 
bership of  this  church,  uniting  with  others,  as  far  back  as 
1816,  to  form  a  "Female  Charitable  Society,"  the  object 
of  which  was  "the  supporting  a  charity  school  and  the 
maintaining  poor  orphans  and  widows"  within  the  city 
of  Natchez.  This  society  was  the  germ  of  the  present 
"Natchez  Protestant  Orphan  Asylum."  I  find  that  the 
Rev.  Daniel  Smith,  then  supply  to  the  Presbyterian  con- 
gregation, preached  a  sermon  for  the  benefit  of  this  in- 
stitution in  February,  1817;  and  that  in  1821  Samuel 
Postlethwaite,  afterward  an  elder  in  this  church,  when 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  53 

the  institution  required  a  permanent  outfit,  presented 
to  it  a  lot  of  ground  at  the  northeast  corner  of  what 
are  now  Pine  and  Homochitto  Streets,  upon  which  the 
first  asylum  was  built.  This  institution  was  and  con- 
tinues to  be  a  public  one,  under  the  control  of  no  par- 
ticular denomination  of  Christians,  but  sustained  by  the 
contributions  of  all  the  Protestant  bodies,  and  presided 
over  by  a  board  of  managers  chosen  from  the  subscribers. 
But  in  their  liberality  in  supporting  it,  and  their  self- 
denying  patience  in  conducting  it,  I  may  safely  say  the 
members  of  this  church  have  been  second  to  no  others. 
Some  of  them  are  toiling  now,  I  know,  in  common  with 
their  associates  from  other  churches,  with  a  solicitude 
which  is  truly  maternal,  and  which  hardly  allows  them 
rest  day  or  night,  to  provide  means  for  the  support  of 
the  sixty-four  fatherless  little  ones  whom  an  almost  ex- 
hausted treasury  threatens  with  starvation. 

Until  within  late  years,  another  organization  existed  in 
the  church,  called  the  "Ladies'  Benevolent  Society," 
whose  donations  to  some  good  object  annually  ranged 
from  three  hundred  to  one  thousand  dollars.  The  "poor- 
fund,"  created  by  voluntary  offerings  on  communion  Sab- 
baths, has  furnished  from  two  to  three  hundred  dollars, 
annually,  for  the  use  of  the  indigent. 

But,  beyond  these  public  methods,  I  can  testify  that 
many  in  this  congregation  have  made  it  their  business, 
and  found  it  a  pleasure,  to  minister  in  private  ways  to 
the  relief  of  the  needy  and  suffering.  It  is  a  mistake  to 
think  there  are  no  sisterhoods  and  brotherhoods  of  mercy 


54  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

in  Protestant  communities;  and  I  gladly  avail  myself  of 
this  opportunity  to  proclaim  it.  I  have  seen  them  at 
work  these  twenty-five  years  at  their  blessed  calling.  I 
have  seen  them,  angels  in  human  shape,  from  this  church 
and  from  other  churches,  quietly,  and  without  parade, 
striving  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  the  children  of  want 
and  woe.  I  have  seen  them  in  times  when  the  epidemic, 
with  its  invisible  artillery,  was  prostrating  its  hundreds 
each  day,  hovering  over  the  beds  of  the  squalid  and  the 
friendless;  find  many  a  sufferer,  I  am  sure,  has  felt,  as 
Florence  Nightingale's  soldier  did,  like  kissing  their 
shadows  as  they  passed.  I  am  cognizant  of  the  fact 
that  within  these  last  two  years,  when  the  destitution  of 
our  population  in  some  cases  almost  reached  the  starving 
and  the  freezing  point,  the  hearts  of  many  a  household 
have  been  made  glad  by  seeing  bread  on  their  tables  and 
fire  on  their  hearths,  furnished  by  benefactors  whom  they 
did  not  know.  The  almoners  here  have  made  no  adver- 
tisement of  their  deeds.  Untrumpeted  and  unmarked, 
they  have  asked  no  praise,  no  reward,  from  man.  They 
will  get  them,  I  trust,  when  He,  out  of  love  to  whom 
they  have  so  labored,  and  whose  spirit  they  have  so  ex- 
emplified, shall  say  to  them,  "Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it  unto 
one  of  the  least  of  these,  ye  did  it  unto  me." 

I  would  bear  witness  also  to  this  third  fact,  that  this 
church,  ever  since  I  have  known  it,  has  maintained,  at 
least  to  some  good  degree,  an  attitude  in  favor  of  the 
social  moralities  which  Christianity  enjoins.  In  its  pub- 
lic testimony,  and  by  the  example,  I  think  I  can  say,  of 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  55 

most  of  its  members,  it  has  sought  to  subserve  the  public 
virtue,  and,  so,  the  public  good,  b}^  checking  the  tend- 
ency of  the  age  and  the  locality  to  extravagance,  to  in- 
temperance, to  Sabbath-desecration,  and  to  illicit  amuse- 
ments. And  though  abounding  vice  may  sometimes 
have  broken  over  its  borders  and  intruded  into  its  terri- 
tory, I  persuade  myself  that  the  presence  of  this  church 
in  the  community  has  been,  in  many  a  direction,  a  bar- 
rier to  the  torrent  of  excess  and  corruption  which  has 
been  setting  upon  it. 

The  history  I  have  undertaken  to  give  would  not  be 
complete,  perhaps,  if  I  did  not  make  at  least  a  brief  allu- 
sion to  three  extraordinary  periods  which  have  occurred 
during  my  ministry. 

The  first  to  which  I  refer  is  the  epidemic  season  of 
1853.  Up  to  that  date  I  had  never  witnessed  a  visitation 
of  the  yellow  fever  in  a  general  and  unequivocal  form. 
The  security  in  which  we  had  allowed  ourselves  to  fall 
was  suddenly  broken  that  year  by  the  appearance  of  sev- 
eral cases  of  this  dreaded  disease,  as  early  as  August; 
and  in  a  short  time  its  presence  in  the  city  was  acknowl- 
edged by  the  public  authorities.  Many  of  you  will 
remember  the  panic  which  ensued.  The  portion  of  the 
population  which  could  escape  fled,  as  from  an  invading 
foe,  to  such  places  of  shelter  as  they  could  find  in  the 
country.  The  residue,  consisting  to  a  large  extent  of 
unacclimated  persons,  remained  to  await  their  fate. 
There  were  few  of  them  whom  the  pestilence  did  not 
reach;  and  many  of  them  it  carried  to  the  grave.     For 


56  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

nearly  four  months  the  places  of  business  were  generally 
closed.  The  grass  literally  sprung  up  in  our  untrodden 
streets;  and  the  silence,  not  of  a  Sabbath,  but  of  a 
funeral  hour,  hung  over  our  usually  bustling  city.  With 
the  exception  of  once,  when  I  was  absent  in  the  country, 
religious  service  was  held  during  the  whole  summer  at 
the  regular  time,  once  each  Sabbath,  in  the  chapel; 
where  a  few  of  my  stricken  flock  found  it  a  comfort  to 
seek  the  consolations  of  the  sanctuary.  Such  scenes  of 
sorrow  as  I  was  compelled  to  witness  may,  perhaps, 
have  been  useful  to  me  as  a  part  of  my  training  for  my 
office;  but  they  are  such  as  I  pray  God  I  may  never  have 
to  witness  again.  I  tried  to  do  my  duty  as  a  minister  of 
religion  during  that  season,  and  in  the  doing  of  it  expe- 
rienced literally  the  fulfillment  of  the  promise,  "A  thou- 
sand shall  fall  at  thy  side,  and  ten  thousand  at  thy  right 
hand,  but  it  shall  not  come  nigh  thee."  The  scourge 
slowly  withdrew  itself;  the  last  victim  was  a  beautiful 
and  gifted  young  lady,  who  had  in  a  false  confidence  re- 
turned from  her  retreat  to  the  town,  and  whom  we  laid 
in  her  grave  on  the  6th  of  December;  and  then,  as  I 
believe  generally  happens  after  such  appalling  disturb- 
ances of  the  public  composure,  the  tide  of  life  and  busi- 
ness and  pleasure  flowed  back  again  as  buoyantly  as 
though  eternity  had  not  been  flashing  its  light  upon  the 
vanity  of  them  all. 

The  second  period  to  be  noted  is  the  summer  of  1858, 
distinguished  for  the  remarkable  revival  of  religion 
which  occurred  generally  throughout  our   city.     Chris- 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  57 

tians  of  the  various  denominations,  moved,  as  it  seemed, 
by  a  spontaneous  impulse,  began  to  ask  if  some  portion 
of  the  gracious  shower  which  was  visiting  other  portions 
of  the  land  might  not  be  caused  to  descend  upon  this 
thirsty  spot;  and,  as  the  result  of  their  conferences,  a 
daily  union  prayer-meeting  was  opened  at  the  chapel  on 
the  morning  of  May  3,  which  was  continued,  without 
intermission,  till  the  beginning  of  the  following  Novem- 
ber. A  month  previously  to  this,  I  had  commenced  a 
daily  service  in  the  afternoon,  for  the  special  benefit  of 
my  own  congregation.  The  latter  of  these  meetings  I 
conducted  entirely  for  seven  months;  the  former  I  as- 
sisted in  maintaining  for  nearly  the  same  length  of  time. 
The  hours  spent  together  thus,  in  the  house  of  prayer, 
will  be  recalled  by  many  as  hallowed  seasons;  and  hun- 
dreds, probably,  look  back  to  the  summer  of  1858  as  the 
time  of  their  spiritual  birth. 

The  third  epoch  which  deserves  a  mention  is  the  dark 
and  dismal  period  embraced  by  the  late  war,  extending 
from  1861  to  1865.  At  the  commencement  of  this 
period,  foreseeing  that  it  was  to  be  a  time  of  trial  and 
calamity  to  my  friends,  and  of  peril  to  the  interests  of 
the  kingdom  of  Christ,  I  resolved  to  direct  my  efforts 
conscientiously  to  the  mitigating  of  the  one  and  the  pro- 
tecting of  the  other.  The  sad  incidents  of  the  period — 
the  horrors  which  lie  inclosed  within  that  deep  gulf — I 
have  no  disposition  to  uncover.  A  storm  terrific  beyond 
precedent — so  strange  in  its  inception,  its  progress,  and 
its  results,  that,  it  seems  to  me,  men  ought  to  stand  awe- 


58  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

stricken  before  it,  as  before  one  of  the  most  wonderful  of 
God's  wonderful  works — swept  over  our  land,  leaviug  it 
the  bereaved,  the  impoverished,  the  disorganized  terri- 
tory we  see  it  to-day.  Happily  for  us,  our  town  was  not 
found  available  for  any  strategic  purposes;  and  until  1863 
the  literal  convulsions  of  war  hardly  disturbed  the  quiet 
of  our  community.  Once  only,  on  the  evening  of  the 
memorable  2d  of  September,  1862,  we  were  exposed  for 
three  hours  to  the  fire  of  a  fleet  of  gunboats  from  the 
river,  by  which  the  town  was  extensively  damaged, 
though  the  lives  of  the  inhabitants,  with  one  excep- 
tion, were  almost  miraculously  preserved.  Not  without 
reason,  on  this  occasion,  our  almost  unaccountable  de- 
liverance was  connected  in  the  minds  of  the  people  with 
the  fact  that  they  had  not  ceased,  week  by  week,  during 
the  war,  to  assemble  for  common  prayer,  to  supplicate 
from  God  that  fatherly  compassion  which  our  exigencies 
needed  ;  prayer,  I  may  remark,  which,  for  the  most  part, 
those  who  conducted  it  strove  to  have  chastened  with 
that  humility  and  submissiveness  which  at  all  times 
become  the  petitions  of  weak  and  fallible  men,  and  espe- 
cially become  them  in  times  of  fevered  popular  excite- 
ment. After  the  occupation  of  the  town,  on  the  13th  of 
July,  1863,  Natchez  became  a  military  post.  Soon  after 
this,  domestic  sorrow  again  invaded  my  household ;  and, 
accepting  the  opportunity  kindly  offered  me  by  the  com- 
mandant of  the  post,  I  visited  my  native  State,  in  the 
vain  hope,  as  the  event  proved,  of  saving  the  life  of  a 
beloved   child.     On   my  return   in  December,   I  found 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  59 

Natchez  a  swarming  hive  of  strangers,  and  the  church — 
in  which,  as  God's  house,  accommodation  had  been, prop- 
erly, extended  to  all — filled  on  the  Sabbath  with  a  crowd 
of  worshipers  of  whom  scarcely  one  in  ten  was  known 
to  me.  The  regular  service  of  the  Sabbath  morning  was 
continued  from  that  time  until  the  close  of  the  war 
enabled  me  to  resume  the  usual  routine  of  duty.  During 
this  anomalous  period,  I  can  say,  the  gospel  was  preached 
in  this  pulpit  with  the  sincere  desire  that  it  should  prove 
the  power  of  God  unto  salvation  to  all  who  heard  it;  and 
I  am  not  without  the  hope  that  it  will  be  found  in  eter- 
nity that  the  seed  then  sown  has  taken  root  in  souls 
whom  personally  I  never  knew.  No  one,  I  think,  can 
review  the  dealings  of  God  with  this  church  during  the 
successive  stages  of  the  war,  without  acknowledging  that 
they  were  characterized  by  singular  goodness,  and  with- 
out feeling  confirmed  in  the  conviction  that  it  was  not  a 
vain  thing  to  put  ourselves,  as  we  did,  at  the  outset  of 
the  convulsion,  under  the  shadow  of  His  wings. 

These  recitals,  perhaps,  cover  the  ground  which  ought 
to  be  occupied  by  my  narrative.  I  will  only  add  that 
since  the  reassembling  of  my  scattered  flock,  in  1865, 
we  have  been  mainly  learning  the  depth  of  poverty  to 
which  we  have  been  reduced,  and  the  multiplied  embar- 
rassments into  which  the  vicissitudes  of  the  past  few 
years  have  thrown  us.  Still,  we  have  encouraged  our- 
selves in  the  Lord  our  God,  and  He  has  not  failed  us. 
He  has  enabled  us  to  maintain  our  existence  amid  the 
difficulties  which  thickened  upon  us,  year  by  year,  until 


60  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

now  we  can  look  around  upon  the  auspicious  change 
which  the  past  year  has  wrought,  and  hope  the  crisis 
is  over;  and  the  hardships  of  our  adversities  may  be- 
queath us  a  blessing,  by  making  us  a  more  diligent,  self- 
denying,  and  trustful  people.  Like  Israel  with  the  Red 
Sea  behind  them,  it  becomes  us  to-day  to  join  in  a  grate- 
ful chorus,  and  proclaim,  "  The  Lord  is  my  strength  and 
song,  and  He  is  become  my  salvation :  He  is  my  God,  and 
I  will  prepare  Him  an  habitation;  my  fathers'  God,  and 
I  will  exalt  Him!" 

As  entering  into  our  ecclesiastical  history,  perhaps  I 
ought  to  mention  just  one  fact  more.  In  the  year  1861, 
in  consequence  of  the  dismemberment  of  the  nation,  the 
Presbyterians  in  the  Southern  States  generally  found 
themselves  obliged  to  effect  a  complete  organization  of 
their  own,  and,  therefore,  constituted  a  General  As- 
sembly, in  which  they  have  since  been  annually  repre- 
sented, and  which  ultimately  assumed  the  title  of  "  The 
General  Assembly  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  the 
United  States."  "With  this  body  this  church,  through 
its  Presbytery,  is  organically  connected.  How  long  this 
separateness  of  organization  will  continue,  or  ought  to 
continue,  I  of  course  am  not  authorized  to  say.  Frac- 
tures which  heal  slowly  perhaps  heal  most  effectually; 
and  it  would  seem  that,  in  a  normal  state  of  things,  frac- 
tures in  any  body  ought  to  heal  some  time.  I  cannot, 
therefore,  withhold  the  expression  of  the  hope  that  a 
personal  unity,  generated  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  may 
soon  prepare  the  way  for  the  knitting  together  in  their 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  61 

old   relations   of  the  whole  Presbyterian  family  of  the 
country. 

I  have  set  before  you  thus,  dear  brethren,  a  few  par- 
ticulars in  the  ministry  of  this  church  for  the  last  twenty- 
five  years,  which  may  serve,  to  some  extent,  to  show  how 
the  office  which  I  have  borne,  as  your  pastor,  has  been 
discharged.  The  reverse  side  of  the  history, — the  ac- 
count of  my  "neglectings"  of  the  gift  which  has  been  in 
me, — I  am  well  aware,  could  be  given,  and  perhaps 
given  by  no  one  better  than  myself.  This,  however, 
ought  to  be  confessed  to  a  higher  tribunal  than  yours. 

Let  me  glance  a  moment,  before  I  conclude,  at  the 
manner  in  which  you  have  acquitted  yourselves  of  your 
obligations  under  the  gift  bestowed  upon  you  by  your 
Divine  Lord. 

It  would  be  strange  ingratitude  if  I  did  not  say  that 
during  my  long  residence  among  you  I  have  been  fol- 
lowed personally  by  your  unwavering  kindness.  On 
several  occasions,  when  I  have  been  solicited  to  change 
my  charge,  the  argument  which  has  kept  me  here  has 
been  that  you  did  not  want  me  to  go.  At  the  end  of 
these  twenty-five  years'  labors,  I  believe  I  may  call 
every  individual,  not  merely  in  this  congregation,  but  in 
Natchez, — so  far  as  its  people  are  \known  to  me, — my 
friend.  I  have  become  embosomed  in  this  society,  not 
merely  in  fact,  but  in  spirit.  My  relations  with  other 
clergymen  and  other  congregations  have  always  been 
pleasant  and  cordial ;  and  among  the  latter  my  services 
have  been  extensively  rendered.     No  root  of  bitterness 


62  QUARTER-CENTURY  SER3I0N. 

has  ever  sprung  up  to  trouble  the  harmony  which  has 
subsisted  between  me  and  my  flock.  I  mention  this,  to 
show  that  that  flock  must  have  discharged  their  duty  in 
the  one  particular,  at  least,  of  "esteeming  very  highly  in 
love  for  their  work's  sake"  those  who  have  been  set  over 
them  in  the  Lord.  I  have  not  a  whisper  of  complaint  to 
utter  in  respect  to  your  treatment  of  me;  unless  it  be 
that  your  love  has  led  you  to  lean  upon  me  too  much 
and  upon  yourselves  too  little.  The  occasion  is  too 
solemn  to  allow  an  indulgence  in  flattery;  and  therefore, 
in  praising  you  for  your  care  of  me,  I  ought  not  to  con- 
ceal from  you  that  my  observation  has  led  me  to  notice 
in  you  the  following  defects, — which,  if  they  exist  here, 
exist  only  because  this  congregation  is  made  up  of  the 
same  infirm  materials  of  which  all  congregations  are 
composed. 

First,  I  think  there  is  among  you  too  much  of  an 
easy  or  drowsy  habit  in  looking  at  the  vineyard  in 
which,  as  the  Lord's  laborers,  you  are  called  to  work. 
In  a  community  where  every  one  is  as  independent  and 
as  free  from  need  as  was  the  case  formerly  with  this,  it 
is  not  strange,  perhaps,  that  you  should  have  taken  it  for 
granted  that  the  world  was  so  comfortable  that  there 
was  no  occasion  for  you  to  ask  the  question  if  there  was 
any  service  which  it  needed  at  your  hands.  This  was  a 
wrong  conclusion,  however,  even  in  respect  to  such  a 
community  as  this  was.  The  world  is  always,  and  in 
every  part  of  it,  a  groaning  and  a  travailing  world;  and 
it  becomes  the  faithful  Christian  to  remember  this,  and 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  63 

to  keep  his  eye  open  with  an  outlooking  benevolence, 
and  his  foot  moving  with  a  pre-eminent  helpfulness, 
which  shall  suffer  no  opportunity  of  doing  good  to  escape 
him,  and  shall  spare  him  the  pain  of  saying,  when  such 
an  opportunity  has  gone  by  unimproved,  "I  am  sorry 
I  did  not  know  of  this." 

Second,  I  think  there  is  among  you  too  much  of  a  dis- 
position to  overlook  what  I  may  call  your  corporate  ob- 
ligations as  members  of  the  Church.  Religion,  as  I  have 
often  taught  you,  is  the  Christian's  business;  and  the 
Church  is  organized  in  part  that  it  may  aid  each  Chris- 
tian in  doing  his  business.  It  is  an  association  of  men 
who  are  described  as  "fervent  in  spirit,  serving  the 
Lord."  It  cannot  do  the  work  of  these  men.  It  cannot 
do  its  own  work  unless  each  man  in  it  recognizes  his 
obligation  to  do  his  portion  of  it.  The  Church  is  but 
the  aggregate  of  the  individuals  in  it ;  and  it  is  nugatory 
for  any  individual  to  argue  that  because  a  Church  exists 
he  is  absolved  from  all  obligation  to  work  in  his  private 
capacity  and  sphere. 

Third,  I  think  there  has  been  evidence  of  an  undue 
laxness  in  your  loyalty  to  the  principles  and  claims  upon 
which  your  Church  asserts  its  right  to  the  character  of  a 
Church.  I  know  it  is  our  privilege  to  hold  a  theory 
which  allows  the  largest  liberality  in  the  recognition  of 
other  bodies  as  churches  of  Christ.  We  believe  the 
Church,  in  its  true  form,  to  consist  of  all  who  show  that 
they  have  been  redeemed  by  the  blood  of  Christ  and  are 
animated  by  the  Spirit  of  Christ.     We  cast  out  none 


64  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

whom  we  have  reason  to  believe  the  Lord  has  accepted. 
External  and  economical  matters  we  regard  as  secondary 
to  this  prime  condition  in  the  constituency  of  the  Church ; 
and  therefore,  though  other  bodies  differ  from  us  in 
these,  if  we  can  call  them  Christians  in  the  sense  of  the 
ISTew  Testament,  we  fraternize  with  them,  we  commune 
with  them,  we  make  no  attempt  to  proselyte  them.  But  in 
doing  this  we  are  not  renouncing  our  preference  for  our 
own  Church,  nor  discrediting  the  reasons  which  make  us 
believe  it  is  entitled  to  our  preference.  Now,  what  I 
wish  to  say  is,  that  if  that  Church  is  worthy  of  being  a 
spiritual  home  for  us,  it  is  worthy  of  being  the  same  for 
all  who  look  to  us  for  guidance.  It  is  worthy  of  being 
the  same  for  our  children.  And  if  we  do  not  strive  to 
keep  them  in  it,  if  we  allow  them  to  wander  to  other 
folds,  we  are  disloyal  to  the  principles  and  claims  upon 
which  that  Church  rests,  and  are  suffering  divisions  to 
break  into  our  families,  where,  to  say  the  least,  there  is 
no  necessity  for  it. 

Fourth,  I  think  I  may  say  there  is  not  enough  of 
religious  study  among  you.  Theological  learning  and 
ecclesiastical  intelligence  are  suffered  to  be  too  much  the 
monopoly  of  those  who  teach  you.  We  are  not  the  robust 
and  thorough-working  Christians  our  fathers  were,  be- 
cause we  do  not  search  the  Scriptures  as  they  did,  and 
do  not  concern  ourselves  with  the  concerns  of  Christ's 
kingdom  as  they  did.  I  hold  that  "the  faith  once  de- 
livered to  the  saints"  ought  to  be  a  subject  of  interest 
always  to  the  saints;  and  the  mission  of  the  Church,  to 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  65 

convert  the  world,  ought  to  enlist  the  solicitude  and 
attention  of  all  who  belong  to  the  Church. 

And,  fifth,  I  think  there  is  prevalent  among  you  too 
weak  a  sense  of  the  authority  and  value  of  the  divine 
ordinances  of  Sabbath-keeping  and.  public  worship.  The 
world  has  its  canons  and  customs,  and  they  press  upon 
us  with  tremendous  power.  Self  has  its  desires  to  urge 
and  its  arguments  by  which  to  sustain  them.  But  neither 
the  exactions  of  the  world  nor  the  solicitations  of  self 
should  be  suffered  by  the  Christian  to  trench  upon  the 
institutions  and  enactments  of  God.  Religion,  which  is 
obedience  to  these  institutions  and  enactments,  is  worth 
all  the  cost  the  practice  of  it  involves.  The  benefit  de- 
rived from  a  Sabbath  well  kept  will  outweigh  all  the 
gain  which  may  possibly  accrue  to  us  from  a  Sabbath 
broken;  and  the  blessing  which  may  come  to  us  in  the 
house  of  God  will  be  cheaply  purchased  by  the  effort 
and  the  inconvenience  demanded  of  us  in  going  there. 

Suffer  these  few  hints,  dear  brethren,  as  I  close  the 
reminiscences  which  this  interesting  occasion  has  called 
up.  The  spot  on  which  I  stand  to-day  is  to  me  very 
solemn  ground.  The  history  of  twenty-five  years  of 
transactions  with  immortal  souls  lies  behind  me;  before 
me,  the  intervening  vista  is  so  short,  so  uncertain,  I  see 
nothing  but  eternity.  It  would  be  wild  presumption  to 
suppose  that  the  end  of  another  quarter-century  will  find 
me  here.  Four  generations  have  sat  within  these  walls. 
Of  the  first,  a  few  yet  survive, — patriarchs  leaning  on 
their  staves  and  waiting  for  their  departure.      To  the 

5 


66  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

second,  the  old  men  and  women  of  the  day  belong,  ap- 
pearing among  us  with  ranks  already  sadly  thinned  by 
death.  The  third  are  the  fathers  and  mothers  now  pre- 
siding in  our  homes.  And  the  fourth  are  their  children. 
So  we  pass  away,  like  the  waves,  breaking  and  dying,  in 
regular  succession  and  with  mournful  cadence,  upon  the 
sand.  "For  all  flesh  is  as  grass;  and  all  the  glory  of 
man  as  the  flower  of  grass.  The  grass  withereth,  and 
the  flower  thereof  falleth  away.  But  the  word  of  the 
Lord  endureth  forever.  And  this  is  the  word  which  by 
the  gospel  is  preached  unto  you."  Yes,  beloved,  from 
all  this  fleeting  pageant  which  has  been  passing  before 
me  as  I  have  pursued  this  narrative,  from  these  vanished 
families,  changed  homesteads,  broken  love-links,  death- 
beds and  graves,  among  which  I  have  been  wandering,  I 
turn  to  this  blessed  gospel,  whose  truths,  whose  prom7 
ises,  whose  gifts,  endure  forever ;  and  I  feel  that  I  love  it 
more,  and  I  promise  myself  that,  by  God's  grace,  I  will 
preach  it  with  more  fidelity,  than  ever  before.  And  I 
charge  you,  my  people,  to  hear  it  from  my  lips,  in  all 
time  to  come,  with  these  thoughts  in  your  hearts,  that  as 
we  have  stood  together  to-day  where  we  can  stand  only 
once,  so  life  itself,  with  its  opportunities  of  salvation,  is  a 
handbreadth,  where  you  can  stand  only  once;  and  that, 
if  these  opportunities  are  not  improved  while  they  are 
given,  the  regret  which  will  follow  you  into  the  long 
eternity,  where  you  must  soon  pass  as  your  forefathers 
have  done,  will  be  endured  only  once,  but  that  once  will 

be  FOREVER. 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMOX.  67 

With  these  thoughts  pressing  upon  my  own  heart, 
I  feel  as  if  I  could  not  let  this  occasion  pass,  as  if  I 
could  not  quit  a  spot  made  so  tender  by  its  reminis- 
cences and  so  serious  by  its  prospects,  without  addressing 
a  special  admonition  to  some  of  you,  to  whom  peculiar 
circumstances  give  a  prominent  place  in  my  regards 
to-day.  There  are  those  among  you  who  have  traveled 
with  me,  step  by  step,  through  these  twenty-five  years, — 
who  heard,  perhaps,  my  first  sermon  in  this  house,  and 
have  continued  to  be  my  hearers  ever  since, — but  who 
have  never  yet,  by  any  authentic  sign,  indicated  that 
you  have  embraced  the  faith  which  I  have  been  trying 
to  inculcate.  Year  by  year,  Sabbath  by  Sabbath,  I  have 
met  you  here,  and  met  you  thankfully  and  in  the  hope 
that  the  message  you  wTere  to  hear  might  be  the  one 
which  should  carry  life  to  your  souls  and  win  you  to  the 
Saviour.  But,  thus  far,  this  hope  has  been  disappointed. 
Such  disappointment  is  a  bitter  trial  to  a  minister  of  the 
gospel.  He  never  can  speak  the  pain,  the  sorrow,  it 
causes  him.  May  I  not  ask  to-day,  from  friends  who 
have  stood  by  me  personally  and  borne  my  counsels  and 
reproofs  in  my  official  teachings  so  long,  if  there  is  not 
some  response  due  to  the  propositions  of  the  gospel 
made  to  them  thus  for  twenty-five  consecutive  years, 
and  if,  in  view  of  the  arguments  and  considerations  by 
which  those  propositions  have  been  sustained,  that,  re- 
sponse ought  not  to  be  like  that  of  the  eunuch  to  Philip, 
— "I  believe  that  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Son  of  God.  See; 
here  is  water.      What  doth  hinder  me  to  be  baptized?" 


68  QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON. 

Some  of  3'ou  are  growing  old.  These  flying  years 
have  left  their  traces  upon  your  whitening  brows  and 
your  bowed  frames.  We  cannot  meet  here  together  much 
oftener.  O  my  friends,  cannot  we  meet  on  ground  nearer 
to  Christ  and  nearer  to  heaven, — cannot  we  meet  at  the 
sacramental  table  and  join  in  the  blessed  festival  which 
tells  of  a  common  redemption  and  a  common  hope  of 
glory, — before  we  part  on  earth  forever  ? 

There  is  another  class,  who  once  were  my  hearers,  but 
now  are  not.  From  some  cause,  not  easily  assigned,  they 
have  forsaken  my  ministry  and  abandoned  the  house  of 
God.  In  private  they  maintain  the  kindest  relations 
with  me,  and  I  do  not  imagine  that  they  would  say 
that  my  preaching  has  had  the  effect  to  convince  them 
that  the  gospel  is  unworthy  of  their  respect  and  cred- 
ence. I  fear  some  wile  of  the  evil  one  has  bound  them 
with  a  spell.  I  fear  that  he  who  in  the  beginning  over- 
threw an  ordinance  of  God  with  the  lying  assurance, 
"Ye  shall  not  surely  die,"  has  persuaded  them  that  the 
ordinances  of  God  are  still  worthless  and  may  be  neg- 
lected without  damage  or  guilt.  My  words  this  morn- 
ing, probably,  do  not  reach  them ;  but  some  report  may 
bear  to  them  my  affectionate  entreaty,  uttered  as  I  enter 
to-day  upon  this  new  stage  of  my  journey,  with  my  face 
looking  directly  into  that  eternity  which  lies  before  us 
both,  that  they  will  come  back  to  their  Father's  house  and 
prosecute  with  me  the  residue  of  our  way  to  that  eter- 
nity under  the  shadow  of  His  altars  and  the  promises  of 
His  covenant. 


QUARTER-CENTURY  SERMON.  69 

And  the  young  men  of  my  charge,  who  have  grown 
up  under  my  teaching,  some  of  whom  were  baptized  by 
my  hands, — may  I  not  ask  them,  as  I  see  them  to-day 
lifted  to  the  heights  of  enterprise  and  power  by  these 
same  years  which  have  carried  me  over  the  summit  and 
turned  my  steps  downwards  toward  the  vale  beyond, — 
may  I  not  ask  them  if  it  is  not  time  that  they  had  taken 
their  position,  heartily  and  boldly,  as  the  followers  and 
friends  of  the  Saviour?  The  shoulders  which  have  borne 
the  ark  hitherto  in  our  Israel  are  dropping  rapidly  away. 
The  servants  who  have  ministered  in  the  Lord's  house  in 
former  years,  you  have  seen,  have  largely  passed  into  his- 
tory. Those  of  us  who  now  serve  at  its  altars  will  soon 
have  our  place  in  history  too.  Oh,  upon  whom  should  the 
mantle  of  the  fathers  fall  but  upon  their  sons  ?  Young 
men  of  this  congregation,  the  past,  with  its  sacred  memo- 
ries, the  future,  with  its  precious  hopes  and  interests,  are 
calling  to  }-ou  to  come  and  take  your  stand  bravely  on 
the  ground  of  your  fathers'  faith  and  by  the  side  of  your 
fathers'  Redeemer,  and  to  do  in  your  day  the  work  for 
God  and  His  Church,  which  they  did  in  theirs,  that  at 
last,  beyond  the  lapse  of  years  and  the  waste  of  death, 
they  and  you  may  meet  together  in  "  the  Church  of  the 
first-born,  which  are  written  in  heaven." 


A  FORTY  YEARS'  PASTORATE. 


A    SERMON 


PKEACHED   ON   THE   SABBATH,  JANUAKY   6,  1884, 


IN  THE 


PRESBYTERIAN  CHURCH,  NATCHEZ,  MISS. 


BY 

REV.    JOSEPH    B.    STRATTON,    D.D., 

PASTOR. 


PRINTED     BY 

J.   B.   LIPPINCOTT    &    CO.,   PHILADELPHIA. 

18  84. 


SEEMOK 


"  And  thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way  which  the  Lord  thy  God  led 
thee  these  forty  years  in  the  wilderness." — Deut.  viii.  2. 


The  narrative  of  the  transfer  of  the  Hebrew  race  from 
Egypt  to  Canaan  strikes  us  probably  as  something  apart 
from  legitimate  human  history.  What  gives  it  this  ex- 
ceptional character  is  the  fact  that  it  abounds  with  extra- 
ordinary Divine  interpositions  in  behalf  of  the  people 
concerned.  The  Lord  their  God  led  them  through  all 
their  way  by  direct  and  sensible  tokens.  After  all,  how- 
ever, the  warp  of  the  movement,  viewed  separately  from 
the  supernatural  material  which  is  inwoven  with  it,  stands 
side  by  side  with  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  analogous 
events  to  be  found  in  the  annals  of  the  world.  It  is  simply 
the  spectacle  of  an  enslaved  race  freeing  themselves  from 
bondage,  migrating  to  another  territory,  conquering  it, 
and  planting  themselves  there  as  an  organized  common- 
wealth. The  spectacle  is  different  from  that  presented  in 
ordinary  history,  because  the  veil  is  lifted  from  the  force 
which  was  working  behind  its  successive  developments, 
as  the  exposure  of  the  mechanism  beneath  the  face  of  a 

73 


74  A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

watch  reveals  the  force  which  determines  the  measured 
motion  of  the  hands  upon  the  dial.  It  is  not  unreasonable 
to  conclude  that  if  the  veil  were  lifted  from  the  secret 
springs  of  historic  events  in  the  case  of  other  nations  and 
communities,  the  finger  of  God  would  be  seen  to  be 
touching  and  directing  those  springs  as  clearly  as  we  are 
permitted  to  see  it  doing  this  work  in  the  case  of  the 
Israelites.  This  is  the  doctrine  of  a  Divine  Providence, 
a  doctrine  which  men  must  hold  in  order  to  possess  any- 
thing worthy  of  the  name  of  a  religion.  It  is  a  doctrine 
revealed  everywhere  in  the  Bible,  and  illustrated  here  in 
the  case  of  the  Hebrew  race  by  an  actual  literal  example. 
We  may  cease  to  look  at  the  forty  years  occupied  in  the 
exodus  of  the  Hebrews  as  an  anomalous  period  therefore, 
and  may  use,  concerning  any  similar  period  in  the  life  of 
any  other  people,  the  language  of  Moses  in  the  text: 
"  Thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way  which  the  Lord  thy 
God  led  thee  these  forty  years  in  the  wilderness."  Wher- 
ever history  is,  however  contracted  the  theatre  may  be, 
there  is  the  hand  of  God.  It  is,  my  brethren,  that  we 
may  trace  the  operations  of  that  hand  during  a  portion  of 
our  history  as  a  church  that  we  have  come  together  this 
morning. 

Forty  years  ago,  in  this  house,  I  was  invested  by  apos- 
tolic authority,  and  through  the  medium  of  apostolic  rites, 
first,  with  the  office  of  a  Christian  minister,  and  then,  with 
the  special  charge  of  this  church  as  its  chief  bishop  and 
pastor.  I  need  hardly  remark  it  was  to  me  a  moment  of 
absorbing   interest,  and  of  almost  overpowering  signifi- 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  75 

canec.  I  find  in  an  old  memorandum-book  an  entry 
bearing  date  the  31st  of  December,  1843,  in  these  words : 
"  This  day  I  was  ordained  by  the  Presbytery  of  Missis- 
sippi to  the  ministry  of  the  gospel,  and  installed  pastor 
of  the  Natchez  Church.  An  eventful  future  and  a  solemn 
eternity  lie  before  me.  God  help  me  to  fulfil  the  vows  my 
soul  has  made  !"  Forty  years  of  that  "  eventful  future" 
which  I  then  anticipated  lie  behind  me  now,  and  but  a 
short  space,  at  the  longest,  divides  me  from  that  "  solemn 
eternity"  which  I  then  saw  in  the  distance.  The  events 
of  that  future,  now  the  past,  it  will  be  my  object  to  some 
extent  to  review.  I  am  reminded  at  the  outset  that  when 
I  say  I  became  pastor  of  this  church  in  1843,  I  must  make 
the  statement  with  some  qualification.  In  its  constituency 
this  church  is  to-day  almost  an  entirely  different  body  of 
people  from  what  it  was  when  I  assumed  the  charge  of  it. 
The  pastor  survives,  but  where  are  the  hands  which  then 
grasped  his  in  fellowship,  and  the  tongues  which  then 
gave  him  a  loving  welcome  ?  The  forms  of  those  who  at 
my  installation  composed  the  membership  of  this  congre- 
gation have  for  the  most  part  passed  away.  I  count  on 
the  roll  of  communicants  but  sixteen  of  the  two  hundred 
and  five  who  constituted  its  membership  in  1843.  Of  this 
original  band  many  have  removed  to  other  localities,  and 
some  are  surviving  in  other  parts  of  the  country.  Among 
these  I  may  notice  the  name  of  Mr.  Franklin  Beaumont, 
who  was  one  of  the  three  ruling  elders  in  office  at  the 
time  when  I  became  pastor  of  the  church.  He  is  now  a 
venerable  man,  nearly  or  quite  ninety  years  of  age,  and  is 


76  ^    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

spending  the  evening  of  his  long  life  in  the  town  of  Lud- 
lowville,  in  New  York.  In  a  letter  recently  received  from 
this  aged  patriarch,  the  only  being  remaining  on  earth 
who  officially  participated  in  the  ceremonies  of  my  instal- 
lation, he  utters  these  words  of  benediction:  "May  God 
be  with  you,  my  former  pastor,  and  your  dear  family, 
caring  for  you  and  strengthening  you  for  every  good  word 
and  work !"  The  great  majority  of  the  flock  who  received 
me  as  their  youthful  shepherd  have  been  translated  by 
death.  Of  the  ministers  belonging  to  the  Presbytery  of 
Mississippi  at  the  period  of  my  induction  into  my  office, 
not  one  is  now  living.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  one 
of  these  ministers  was  the  Rev.  William  Montgomery, 
one  of  the  first  party  of  pioneers  who,  under  a  commis- 
sion from  the  Synod  of  North  Carolina,  visited  the  Terri- 
tory of  Mississippi  in  1801,  and  planted  the  foundations 
of  the  Presbyterian  Church  in  this  then  wilderness  of  the 
Southwest.  "  Father  Montgomery,"  as  he  had  come  to 
be  called  long  before  I  knew  him,  made  the  ordaining 
prayer  at  my  ordination,  and  delivered  the  charge  to  the 
pastor  at  my  installation.  Through  this  link  the  term  of 
my  ministry  connects  itself  historically  with  the  chain 
which  carries  us  back  to  the  inception  of  Presbyterianism 
in  the  Southwest.  The  church  of  which  I  am  pastor  to- 
day consists  very  largely  of  those  who  were  infants  when 
I  began  my  ministry,  or  who  have  been  born  since  that 
date.  The  children  who  are  brought  to  me  now  for 
baptism  are  the  children  of  those  whom  I  baptized  long 
years  ago,  and  in  some  cases  the  children  of  these  children. 


A    FORTY  FEARS'   PASTORATE.  77 

I  have  lived  to  see  one  upon  whose  brow  in  childhood  I 
placed  the  sacramental  seal  a  ruling  elder  in  the  church. 
One  generation  has  given  place  to  another,  and  this  other 
begins  to  feel  the  presence  and  the  pressure  of  a  third ;  so 
that  the  facts  of  yesterday,  as  they  seem  to  me,  are  grow- 
ing into  traditions  among  those  who  now  occupy  the  stage, 
and  the  men  and  women  who  are  to  me  living  beings, 
when  my  memory  recalls  them  and  my  tongue  speaks  of 
them,  are  by  those  around  me  apprehended  only  as  myths 
or  shadows.  The  sweep  of  forty  years  over  the  world  is 
like  that  of  a  mighty  flood, — it  leaves  scarcely  a  vestige 
of  the  objects  which  were  standing  at  the  beginning. 
Nothing  impresses  the  mind  more  forcibly — and,  I  may 
add,  more  sadly — with  the  ephemeral  character  of  the 
present  life  than  the  rapidity  with  which  the  traces  of 
man's  existence  may  be  erased  from  the  scenes  and  walks 
which  he  once  filled.  From  the  list  of  those  who  have  trod 
these  streets,  dwelt  in  these  homes,  worshipped  in  these 
pews,  I  could  mention  the  names  and  picture  the  forms  of 
many  who  illustrated  the  noblest  types  of  manhood  and 
womanhood,  who  stood  in  their  places  in  the  church  and 
in  society  like  majestic  pillars  or  graceful  corner-stones, 
bearing  up  by  their  example  and  testimony  the  manifold 
interests  of  the  community  so  visibly,  that  to  the  eye  of 
their  contemporaries  it  seemed  that  their  continued  pres- 
ence was  a  condition  essential  to  the  continuance  of  truth 
and  righteousness  on  the  earth.  And  yet  they  have  gone 
like  the  leaves  of  autumn,  and  in  the  short  space  of  forty 
years  the  ground  on  which  they  acted  their  parts  is  peopled 


78  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

by  a  race  who  cannot  remember  them,  and  can  hardly  be 
made  to  understand  that  such  persons  ever  lived.  This 
vanishing  so  quickly  and  so  completely  of  things  so  real, 
and  embodying  in  themselves  so  grandly  every  element 
by  which  a  right  to  endure  could  be  substantiated,  from 
the  sphere  where  they  had  begun  their  existence  is  to  my 
mind  proof  conclusive  that  this  life  is  011I37  an  initial  state, 
pointing  as  by  a  necessary  sequence  to  an  immortal  one 
beyond  it.  A  world  which  has  proved  itself  incapable  of 
keeping  safe  that  which  had  so  shown  itself  entitled  to  a 
safe-keeping  must  certainly  be  followed  by  another  which 
shall  better  preserve  the  treasure  intrusted  to  it.  Extinc- 
tion in  such  a  case  is  incredible.  The  earth  turns  on  its 
axis,  and  the  stars  which  blazed  in  the  sky  sink  one  by 
one  below  the  horizon  and  seem  to  have  perished;  but 
they  have  only  left  one  hemisphere  to  kindle  the  firma- 
ment of  another.  The  eaglet  in  its  nest  feathers  its  wings 
from  day  to  da}T,  and  moulds  "and  fills  out  the  symmetry 
of  its  royal  form,  and  then  disappears.  The  nest  is 
vacant,  but  the  eaglet  is  floating  yonder  in  the  wide 
empyrean,  with  its  pinions  flashing  back  the  lustre  of  the 
sunbeams. 

It  will  be  remembered  by  many  of  3^011  that  in  January, 
1869,  at  the  close  of  the  first  quarter-century  of  my 
ministry,  I  delivered  two  discourses,  presenting  the  main 
facts  in  the  history  of  this  church  up  to  that  point.  Those 
discourses  were  published,  and  are  perhaps  in  the  hands 
of  most  of  you.  They  can  be  furnished  to  those  who  do 
not  possess  them.      The  period  canvassed   in  those  dis- 


A   FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  79 

courses  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  review  on  the  present 
occasion,  only  so  far  as  to  reveal  the  thread  which  connects 
the  events  of  the  subsequent  fifteen  years  with  the  early 
facts  of  our  history.  Recurring  briefly  to  some  of  these 
facts,  I  remark  that  the  organization  of  the  Presbyterian 
Church  in  Natchez  dates  from  the  year  1817,  when  nine 
persons, — four  males  and  five  females, — under  the  direc- 
tion of  the  Rev.  Daniel  Smith,  a  minister  from  New 
England,  who  had  been  laboring  for  some  time  in  the 
city,  were  enrolled  as  members.  To  these  nine  others 
were  shortly  after  added,  and  a  corps  of  ruling  elders, 
consisting  of  John  Henderson,  Joseph  Forman,  Richard 
Pearce,  and  William  B.  Noyes,  was  elected.  The  Rev. 
Mr.  Smith  was  invited  to  minister  to  the  infant  church  as 
stated  supply.  Prior  to  this  the  few  Presbyterians  in 
Natchez  had  been  accustomed  to  worship  at  the  Pine 
Ridge  Church,  then  called  "  Salem  Church,"  which  had 
been  organized  in  1807,  and  in  which  John  Henderson 
and  Joseph  Forman  had  served  as  ruling  elders.  As  far 
back  as  1800  and  1801,  Natchez  had  received  a  visit  from 
three  ministers  of  the  Presbyterian  denomination,  who 
had  been  sent  out  by  the  Synod  of  North  Carolina  on  an 
exploring  tour  to  the  Territory  of  Mississippi, — the  Rev. 
James  Hall,  the  Rev.  James  Bowman,  and  the  Rev.  Wil- 
liam Montgomery. 

These  missionaries,  or  some  of  them,  devoted  several 
months  to  labors  in  this  city,  and  so  favorable  was  the 
impression  left  by  them,  that  on  their  departure  an  address 
of  thanks,   signed   by  more  than  thirty  of  the  leading 


80  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

citizens,  was  presented  to  them,  closing  with  a  request 
that  they  would  return,  or  send  others  to  complete  the 
work  they  had  begun.  In  1808  the  Rev.  Jacob  RickhOw, 
a  minister  in  connection  with  the  Presbytery  of  New 
Brunswick,  in  New  Jersey,  arrived  at  Natchez,  and  for 
several  years  taught  a  school  and  preached  to  a  small 
congregation.  The  erection  of  a  Presbyterian  house  of 
worship  was  projected  in  1810,  and  in  1812  the  corner- 
stone of  a  building  was  laid  on  the  spot  where  our  present 
church  edifice  stands.  The  building  was  of  brick,  and 
occupied  the  summit  of  a  hill  corresponding  with  the 
one  still  standing  on  the  opposite  side  of  State  Street.  It 
was  completed  and  dedicated  in  1815.  In  this  church  the 
congregation  worshipped  till  1829,  under  the  ministry, 
successively,  of  the  Rev.  Daniel  Smith,  stated  supply  from 
1817  to  1819;  the  Rev.  "William  Weir,  a  clergyman  from 
Ireland,  the  first  regularly  installed  pastor,  from  1820  to 
1822 ;  and  the  Rev.  George  Potts,  a  native  of  Philadel- 
phia, who  was  installed  second  pastor  in  1823.  In  1828- 
29  the  original  church  edifice  was  taken  down,  the  hill 
graded  to  the  level  of  the  present  site,  and  a  new  structure 
erected,  which,  after  having  undergone  various  internal 
changes  and  having  been  lengthened  sixteen  feet  in  1851, 
forms  substantially  the  building  in  which  we  still  worship. 
In  1835,  Mr.  Potts  resigned  the  pastorship  in  order  to 
accept  a  call  to  a  church  in  New  York ;  and  in  1837,  Rev. 
Samuel  G.  Winchester,  a  native  of  Baltimore,  and  pre- 
viously pastor  of  a  church  in  Philadelphia,  was  installed 
the  third  pastor  of  the  Natchez  Church.     Mr.  Winchester 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  gl 

having  died  in  1841,  the  church  remained  vacant  until 
December  31, 1843,  when  I  was  installed  its  fourth  pastor. 
At  the  close  of  Mr.  Weir's  ministry  there  were  forty-nine 
communicants  on  the  roll ;  at  the  close  of  Mr.  Potts's,  one 
hundred  and  thirty-five;  and  at  the  close  of  Mr.  Win- 
chester's, two  hundred  and  five.  To  the  original  four 
ruling  elders  there  were  added,  by  successive  elections, 
Samuel  S.  Spencer,  in  1818;  Dr.  Andrew  Macrery,  in 
1821;  Samuel  Postlethwaite,  in  1825 ;  and  Thomas  Hen- 
derson, William  Pearce,and  Franklin  Beaumont,  in  1838. 
These  last  three  constituted  the  eldership  at  the  time  of 
my  installation. 

To  complete  just  here  the  enumeration  of  those  who 
have  filled  this  important  office  in  the  house  of  God,  I 
may  add  that  in  1849,  Mr.  Pearce  and  Mr.  Beaumont 
having  removed  to  other  States,  the  Session  was  reinforced 
by  the  election  of  Dr.  John  Ker,  Samuel  B.  Newman,  and 
James  Carradine.  Dr.  Ker  lived  only  to  the  following 
year,  and  in  1853,  Mr.  Newman  removed  to  New  Orleans. 
An  addition  of  four  new  members  was  made  in  1855,  by 
the  election  of  L.  M.  Patterson,  Oren  Metcalf,  Alexander 
J.  Postlethwaite,  and  Thomas  C.  Pollock.  Mr.  Thomas 
Henderson,  the  patriarch  of  the  Session,  and  the  exemplar 
of  every  grace  and  gift  which  characterizes  the  faithful 
bishop,  died  in  1863,  and  Mr.  Postlethwaite  followed  him 
to  the  eternal  rest  in  1866.  In  1871  a  further,  and  the 
last,  accession  to  the  eldership  was  made  by  the  election  of 
John  W.  Henderson,  Frederick  J.  V.  Lecand,  and  James 
Carson,  Esq.     No  breach  in  the  body  as  thus  constituted 


82  A    FORTY   FEARS'    PASTORATE. 

occurred  till  May  1,  1875,  when  it  pleased  God  to  remove 
from  it  a  brother  beloved  in  the  person  of  James  Carra- 
dine.  For  twenty-six  years  Mr.  Carradine  had  devotedly 
served  and  tenderly  borne  upon  his  heart  the  interests  of 
the  church  of  which  the  Holy  Ghost  had  made  him  over- 
seer. From  the  death  of  Mr.  Henderson  he  had  been 
invested  by  the  Session  with  the  office  of  superintendent 
of  the  Sabbath-school.  The  exercise  of  this  office  was  to 
him  truly  a  labor  of  love.  With  a  parental  fondness  he 
watched  over  his  youthful  charge,  and  with  the  magnetic 
power  which  an  enthusiastic  temperament  and  a  kind 
heart  threw  into  all  his  dealings  with  others,  he  drew  to 
him  the  affection  and  confidence  of  his  flock.  In  early  life, 
at  a  time  when  for  a  young  man  to  embrace  a  religious 
life  was  to  make  himself  singular,  perhaps  unpopular,  in 
his  circle,  lie  had  the  manliness  to  obey  the  dictates  of 
his  conscience,  and  the  courage  to  avow  himself  a  follower 
of  the  Saviour,  "  despising  the  shame."  With  him  the 
profession  of  his  faith  was  no  pious  form,  no  mere  as- 
sumption of  the  decencies  of  a  religious  walk;  it  was  a 
consecration  of  his  entire  soul  and  life  to  God.  The  con- 
ception of  the  love  of  Christ,  impressed  upon  his  heart 
at  the  beginning  of  his  career,  was  so  simple,  and  yet  so 
profound,  that  he  never  ceased  to  be  under  the  constrain- 
ing power  of  it.  His  zeal  made  him  ready  to  use  whatever 
talents  he  possessed  in  his  Master's  service,  and  the  fer- 
vency of  his  spirit  gave  to  all  his  efforts  a  glowing  heat 
and  force.  Under  these  circumstances  it  was  not.  hard  for 
him  to  open  his  lips  in  public  prayer,  or  to  express  his 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  83 

convictions  of  truth  or  duty  in  public  exhortation.  Mr. 
Cairadine  was  a  man  of  business,  and  felt  that,  as  such,  it 
was  in  the  sphere  of  business  that  his  religion  was  most 
carefully  to  assert  itself.  His  circumspection  here  made 
him,  by  the  testimony  of  all  his  associates,  an  upright 
and  honest  man.  Overtaken  by  disaster  in  his  early 
enterprises,  he  never  rested  till  every  obligation  he  was 
under  to  others  had,  by  patient  toil  and  economy,  been 
fully  discharged.  Through  years  of  subsequent  prosperity 
he  maintained  a  credit  without  a  flaw,  and  a  character  so 
uncorrupt  that  it  was  more  than  half  the  basis  of  his 
credit.  And  in  his  last  days,  when  the  storm  again  pros- 
trated him,  it  was,  perhaps,  the  overstrain  of  his  efforts 
to  be  just  to  others,  when  others  had  failed  to  be  just  to 
him,  and  the  hard  sacrifices  he  made  in  order  to  save  that 
good  name  which  he  valued  more  than  wealth,  which 
exhausted  both  mind  and  body,  and  left  him  an  easy  prey 
to  the  assaults  of  disease.  Alike  in  his  blessings  and  his 
chastisements  he  acknowledged  the  loving  kindness  of 
God,  and,  perfected  by  the  gracious  discipline  contained 
in  each,  he  passed  at  his  death,  we  may  be  sure,  into  the 
rest  which  God  has  prepared  for  His  weary  ones.  He  was 
a  whole-hearted  lover  of  his  church,  and  found  in  its 
society  and  fellowship  and  its  institutions  and  usages  the 
provision  which  his  soul  craved.  And  to-day,  I  am  per- 
suaded, it  will  be  a  pleasure  to  many  who  remember  him 
to  use  with  me  this  occasion  to  recall  his  worth,  and  to 
bedew  with  a  fresh  tear  his  grave. 

Since  the  first  draft  of  this  discourse  was  written,  intel- 


84  A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

ligence  has  reached  us  of  the  death,  on  the  1st  of  this 
present  month,  of  Mr.  L.  M.  Patterson,  another  of  the 
ruling  elders  of  the  church.  Elected  in  1855,  Mr.  Pat- 
terson's term  of  office  has  extended  through  twenty-eight 
years.  For  nearly  or  quite  fifty  years  he  has  been  a 
devoted  member  of  this  church.  Embarking  in  mercan- 
tile business  in  his  early  years,  he  shared  in  the  general 
prosperity  of  the  period,  until  the  reverses  of  1838-39 
involved  him  with  hundreds  of  others  in  commercial  ruin. 
Since  that  time  his  life  has  been  a  struggle  with  a  series 
of  vicissitudes,  alleviated  by  few  glimpses  of  happiness. 
He  was  patient  and  retiring  in  his  disposition,  firm  in  his 
religious  principles,  and  ever  ready  to  obey  the  call  of 
duty.  His  charity  was  proverbial,  his  sympathies  wide, 
and  his  many  good  deeds  gained  for  him  the  reputation 
of  the  friend  of  the  poor.  For  several  years  his  accumu- 
lated infirmities  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  retire  from 
active  life,  and  in  the  home  provided  for  him  by  his 
daughters,  surrounded  by  their  loving  ministries,  at  the 
age  of  eighty,  he  closed  his  eyes  upon  a  clouded  world,  to 
open  them,  we  trust,  upon  that  brighter  one  where  failure 
and  disappointment  are  unknown. 

Of  the  remaining  members  of  the  Session,  it  may  not 
be  out  of  place  to  remark  that  the  years  which  have 
passed  since  their  assumption  of  their  office  have,  in  the 
case  of  most  of  them,  left  their  imprint  in  the  way  of 
impaired  health  and  efficiency.  They  begin  to  show  by 
many  signs  the  enfeebling  effects  of  age  or  disease. 
These  facts  are  referred  to  that  I  may  call  attention  to  an 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  85 

exigency  which  evidently  impends  over  us  as  a  church. 
The  time  is  near  when,  among  those  who  are  enlisted  in 
the  service  of  Christ,  some  will  be  needed  to  maintain  the 
order  of  His  house  by  bearing  office  in  it.  The  call  of  God 
to  undertake  the  work  of  the  ruling  elder  comes  to  certain 
of  His  covenanted  servants,  just  as  distinctly  as  it  comes  to 
others  to  undertake  that  of  the  teaching  elder.  And  this 
call  is  to  be  recognized  largely  in  providential  circum- 
stances. That  call  is  apparently  even  now  addressing 
the  challenge  to  some  in  this  church :  "  Who  among  you 
are  ready,  like  Joshua  of  old,  to  step  into  the  place  of  the 
departing  Moses,  and  go  in  and  out  among  God's  people 
as  the  leaders  of  His  host?"  And  the  duty  is  laid  no  less 
clearly  upon  these  people  of  God  at  this  juncture  to  be 
earnest  in  prayer,  that  His  spirit  may  so  move  upon  the 
hearts  of  those  whom  He  is  calling  to  this  work,  and  may 
so  touch  their  hands  and  their  tongues,  that  they  shall 
willingly  offer  themselves  as  guides  and  guardians  of  His 
flock  when  the  older  shepherds  are  gone. 

I  may  add  at  this  point  that  in  the  year  1872  the 
organization  of  the  church  was  for  the  first  time  made 
complete  by  the  introduction  into  it  of  a  Board  of  Deacons. 
The  care  of  the  poor,  and  the  other  forms  of  duty  belong- 
ing to  this  office,  had  not  previously  been  so  urgent  as  to 
demand  the  services  of  a  special  body  of  men.  The 
necessity  for  them  became  more  and  more  apparent 
during  the  years  which  followed  the  late  civil  war,  when 
the  crowding  into  the  town  of  numbers  of  emancipated 
slaves  incapable  of  providing  for  themselves,  the  failure 


gg  A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

of  investments  to  yield  an  income,  and  the  lack  of  employ- 
ment for  mechanics  so  multiplied  the  cases  of  destitution 
and  distress  that  the  casual  liberality  of  individuals  was 
no  longer  adequate  to  abate  the  general  distress.  Accord- 
ingly, the  church  felt  called  upon  to  undertake  this  min- 
istry of  charity,  and  proceeded  to  elect  as  its  agents,  on 
the  24th  of  April  in  the  year  just  mentioned,  five  deacons, 
viz. :  William  Abbott,  James  W.  H.  Patterson,  Thomas 
Mason,  John  Harper,  and  Hiram  M.  Baldwin.  A  great 
amount  of  good  has  been  systematically  and  judiciously 
done  within  the  last  ten  years  by  this  excellent  Board. 
God's  bounty,  through  the  hands  of  these  almoners,  has 
flowed  into  many  a  poverty-stricken  home,  has  comforted 
many  a  penniless  invalid,  and  has  brought  relief  to  many 
a  desolate  heart.  Since  1872  some  two  thousand  three 
hundred  dollars  in  money  has  been  distributed  by  the 
deacons.  The  original  Board  remains  in  office  at  the 
present  time,  with  the  exception  of  Hiram  M.  Baldwin, 
who  departed  this  life  August  20,  1873.  Coming  into 
the  church  by  a  profession  of  his  faith  during  the  revival 
of  1858,  Mr.  Baldwin  brought  with  him  convictions  of 
Christian  doctrine  and  of  religious  duty  which  had  been 
derived  from  the  Word  of  God  and  fastened  upon  his 
mind  by  early  training,  and  which  were  kindled  into 
active  motives  and  principles  by  his  vivid  apprehension  of 
the  grace  of  Christ  in  redemption.  His  heart  was  given 
to  the  service  of  his  Master  and  to  the  work  of  the  church. 
As  a  prominent  merchant  for  many  years  in  this  city,  his 
character  was  distinguished  for  probity,  and  as  a  Christian 


A   FORTY   FEARS'    PASTORATE.  87 

his  piety  was  of  a  simple  and  childlike  type,  and  steady 
and  consistent  in  all  its  outward  expressions.  His  light 
shone  with  a  calm  but  unequivocal  lustre  while  he  lived, 
and  his  death  was  lamented  by  the  church  as  an  almost 
irreparable  calamity. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  very  natural  remark  which  I 
penned  on  the  night  of  the  day  of  my  installation,  when 
with  a  trembling  glance  I  was  exploring  the  darkness 
which  enveloped  the  way  upon  which  I  was  entering, — "  an 
eventful  future  lies  before  me."  I  can  say  to-day,  as  I 
look  back  over  the  period  covered  by  my  ministry,  that  it 
has  verified  at  every  point  the  character  which  it  bore  in 
the  vision  of  it  which,  forty  years  ago,  loomed  up  before 
my  excited  imagination.  That  period  has  been  an  emi- 
nently eventful  one.  Changes  in  the  condition  of  the 
world,  so  stupendous  that  no  thoughtful  mind  can  fail  to 
see  in  them  the  august  unfoldings  of  a  Divine  intelligence 
and  plan,  have  been  crowded,  like  the  miracles  of  the 
exodus,  into  this  brief  space.  The  political  map  of  every 
quarter  of  the  globe  has  been  more  or  less  altered. 
Political  theories  have  been  materially  modified.  The 
functions  of  government  have  come  to  be  better  defined 
and  more  generally  understood,  and  the  prerogatives  of 
rulers  and  the  rights  of  the  ruled  are  vibrating  in  almost 
all  lands  into  a  juster  equilibrium.  Religious  toleration  is 
granted  on  a  scale  never  known  before.  A  Bible  Deposi- 
tory stands  within  the  shadow  of  the  Vatican  at  Rome. 
Arbitration,  guided  by  reason  and  justice,  is  offering  itself, 
as  an  umpire  in  national  disputes,  as  a  substitute  for  grim- 


88  A   FORTV   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

visagedwar;  and  olive-crowned  plenipotentiaries,  deliber- 
ating in  quiet  halls,  now  settle  controversies  which  once 
could  have  been  adjusted  only  on  bloody  battle-fields. 
International  expositions  of  the  arts  of  industry  and  the 
products  of  agriculture, — oecumenical  gatherings  of  reli- 
gious bodies,  evangelical  alliances  and  associations  bring- 
ing the  men  of  kindred  faith  from  every  section  of  the 
globe  into  council, — have  become  an  institution  of  the  age, 
and  are  visibly  breaking  down  the  barriers  of  ecclesiasti- 
cism  and  sectarian  prejudice  and  animosity  which  have 
heretofore  divided  the  families  of  God's  people.  Christ- 
endom has  been  distributing  the  arts  of  civilization  all  along 
the  lines  of  its  commerce,  and  Christian  missions  have  been 
bearing  that  religion — of  whose  benign  inspiration  these 
arts  are  the  fruitage — to  the  realms  of  heathenism.  The 
New  Zealander  has  become  a  worshipper  of  Jesus.  Aus- 
tralia is  an  evangelized  empire.  The  dark  continent  of 
Africa  has  been  laid  open  by  the  heroism  of  a  Livingstone 
and  a  Stanley,  and  marts  of  business  and  schools  and 
churches  are  springing  up  in  its  far  interior.  Science  has 
been  bringing  to  light  new  truths  from  the  archives  of 
nature,  and  deciphering  old  truths  from  the  inscribed 
walls  of  Assyrian  palaces  and  the  tombs  of  Egyptian 
kings.  Navigation  and  commerce  have  been  revolution- 
ized through  the  applications  of  steam.  Oceans  have  been 
compressed  into  the  dimensions  of  estuaries  by  the  speed 
given  to  the  modern  ship.  Railways,  after  spreading  their 
iron  net-work  over  the  countries  of  the  West,  are  stretch- 
ing their  lines  eastward  into  India,  China,  and   Japan. 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  89 

The  telegraph  furnishes  the  daily  paper  with  the  news  of 
yesterday  from  the  farthest  points  of  the  earth.  It  con- 
ducts the  negotiations  of  States,  and  sends  the  throb 
of  joy  or  sorrow  from  heart  to  heart  over  leagues  of 
intervening  space.  President  Garfield  dies,  and  in  a  few 
hours  the  sable  emblazony  of  mourning  hangs  from  the 
capitols  of  Europe  and  even  of  Asia.  He  is  buried,  and 
Queen  Victoria  orders  flowers,  which  were  blooming  on 
their  stems  when  her  order  was  given,  to  be  laid  upon  his 
bier.  The  man  who  had  died  forty  years  ago,  if  he  should 
return  to  the  world  to-day,  would  hardly  know  the  planet 
on  which  he  had  lived,  or  would  be  constrained  to  confess 
a  power  like  that  which  divided  the  Red  Sea  and  levelled 
the  walls  of  Jericho  has  wrought  this  amazing  metamor- 
phosis. 

And  on  the  narrower  platform  of  our  own  country  a 
similarly  eventful  process  has  been  going  on.  Our  popu- 
lation has  more  than  doubled  itself  since  1843.  The  war 
with  Mexico  gave  to  our  government  a  territory  on  the 
Pacific  slope  which  has  grown  into  a  splendid  empire. 
The  recent  civil  war  has  banished  slavery  from  a  cluster 
of  States,  and  effected  such  an  overthrow  of  the  social, 
commercial,  and  political  economy  under  which  their  in- 
habitants lived  that  the  problem  of  existence,  it  may 
almost  be  said,  has  had  to  be  wrought  out  by  them  afresh 
from  new  data  and  by  new  principles.  Great  cities,  the 
nerve-centres  of  trade  and  speculation,  have  sprung  up 
on  Western  plains  where  the  prairie-grass  once  waved,  or 
in  mountain  valleys  where  slumbered   the  undiscovered 


90  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

coal  and  iron.  Accumulations  of  wealth  by  the  millions, 
which  would  in  the  days  of  our  fathers  have  seemed 
impossible,  are  now  an  every-day  phenomenon.  A  fleet 
of  iron  steamers  from  every  shore  in  the  world  now  daily 
enters  our  Atlantic  ports.  A  summer  excursion  leads  the 
tourist  to  the  banks  of  the  Mle,  the  Ganges,  or  the  Jordan. 
Machinery  ploughs  our  fields,  sows  our  grain,  and  reaps 
our  harvests.  The  magic  wire  flashes  a  vote  in  Congress 
from  Washington  to  San  Francisco,  before  the  echo  of 
the  voices  which  gave  it  have  died  in  the  parliamentary 
hall,  and  wafts  the  last  sigh  of  a  dying  mother  in  Maine 
to  her  son  in  Texas,  before  the  lips  which  breathed  it  are 
cold.  In  flying  hotels,  driven  by  an  invisible  giant  along 
pathways  of  steel,  more  men  than  Moses  led  through  the 
Arabian  desert  are  gliding  every  hour  of  the  day  or  night 
with  lightning  speed  over  this  American  continent.  The 
journey  from  ]STew  York  to  Natchez,  which  in  my  early 
days  had  to  be  made  mostly  in  stage-coaches  over  the 
Alleghany  mountains  and  in  steamboats  through  the  long 
windings  of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  Rivers,  requiring 
two  or  three  weeks  and  sometimes  a  month  in  the  transit, 
can  now  be  made  in  a  little  more  than  sixty  hours. 

And  to  come  now  to  our  own  particular  home  in  this 
community  and  this  church,  it  is  still  an  "  eventful"  history 
which  we  have  to  survey  in  the  retrospect  of  the  last  forty 
years.  Dividing  that  period  into  successive  stages,  I  may 
say  the  first  one,  consisting  of  eighteen  years,  from  1843 
to  1861,  was  characterized  by  a  uniform  and  wholesome 
prosperity, — I   say  wholesome  prosperity  because,  for  a 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  Q\ 

series  of  years  prior  to  this,  the  State  of  Mississippi  had 
been  the  theatre  of  a  remarkable  unwholesome  prosperity. 
Values  of  property  and  products  had  been  swollen  to 
an  excessive  magnitude ;  credit  was  asked  and  given  to 
an  insane  degree ;  financial  recklessness  prevailed ;  the 
promises  of  individuals  and  corporations  circulated  as 
capital ;  until  as  a  natural  outgrowth  of  such  infatuation 
a  collapse  ensued,  and  the  country  was  prostrated  by  an 
almost  universal  bankruptcy.  In  this  wrecked  condition 
I  found  it  at  the  commencement  of  my  ministry.  The 
church  was  affected  in  common  with  other  interests  by 
the  decline  in  population  and  material  resources  which 
followed  upon  this  commercial  catastrophe.  In  1844  its 
membership  had  been  reduced,  according  to  the  report 
made  to  the  General  Assembly,  to  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
three.  Its  contributions  to  Domestic  and  Foreign  missions 
amounted  to  eleven  hundred  and  eighty-three  dollars, 
while  in  1838  they  had  amounted  to  four  thousand  five 
hundred  and  sixty-two  dollars.  By  slow  degrees,  how- 
ever, both  country  and  church  rose  again  from  this 
depression,  and  regained  a  normal  condition  of  thrift  and 
progress.  In  1860  the  membership  reported  was  three 
hundred  and  sixty,  and  the  contributions  to  Domestic  and 
Foreign  missions  amounted  to  the  sum  of  three  thou- 
sand nine  hundred  and  sixty-one  dollars.  In  the  same 
year  there  was  reported  as  raised  for  special  congrega- 
tional purposes  the  sum  of  ten  thousand  six  hundred  and 
ninety-six  dollars.  During  the  year  1858  eighty-seven 
persons  were  admitted   to  the   church    on  profession  of 


92  A    FORTY  FEARS'   PASTORATE. 

their  faith.  This  bright  period  was  brought  to  a  close  by 
the  fearful  conflict  in  which  the  Northern  and  Southern 
sections  of  the  United  States  became  involved,  as  the 
result  of  the  heated  political  controversies  which  had  long 
divided  them.  The  issues  of  that  conflict,  direct  and 
indirect,  revolutionized  the  whole  system  of  life  under 
which  this  community  had  subsisted  to  an  extent  almost 
without  a  parallel  in  history.  They  can  be  likened  only 
to  the  devastations  of  an  earthquake.  Property  of  untold 
value  was  swept  from  the  hands  of  its  possessors  as 
by  a  magician's  wand.  A  dynasty  of  men  once  lords  of 
the  soil,  and  exercising  the  authority  of  feudal  barons  in 
their  domains, — many  of  them  as  princely  in  character  as 
they  were  in  estate, — has  ceased  to  exist.  Slavery  has 
been  abolished,  and  as  a  consequence  domestic  usages  and 
methods  of  labor  have  been  changed.  The  colored  race 
have  become  sharers  in  the  rights  of  citizenship,  and 
were  converted  in  a  moment  into  a  tremendous  political 
power  in  the  state.  For  a  series  of  years  the  rigors  of 
military  rule,  and  the  even  worse  disorders  induced 
by  the  misrule  of  a  mercenary  provisional  government, 
so  blighted  the  energies  and  so  obstructed  the  efforts  of 
our  people  that  every  public  interest  languished,  and  a 
mortal  paralysis  seemed  to  have  settled  upon  the  body 
politic.  The  church  during  this  dark  period  felt  sadly 
the  obscuration  of  this  disastrous  eclipse.  Many  of  its 
constituents  were  obliged  to  change  their  residence  and 
seek  a  livelihood  in  other  sections  of  the  country ;  it 
was  reduced  to  a  painful  degree  of  impoverishment  in  its 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  93 

resources,  and  what  was  perhaps  worse,  the  pressure  of 
worldly  cares  and  the  endless  struggle  with  secular  em- 
barrassments, to  a  deplorable  extent,  threw  the  blight  of 
a  spiritual  insensibility  into  the  hearts  of  the  people  of 
God.  In  1875  the  reported  number  of  communicants 
was  two  hundred  and  eighty-eight,  of  whom  not  more 
than  two-thirds,  probably,  could  have  been  called  living 
or  active  members  of  the  church.  And  the  contribu- 
tions for  Domestic  and  Foreign  missions  for  that  year 
amounted  to  only  one  hundred  and  ninety-seven  dollars. 

A  third  era  of  a  more  auspicious  character,  I  am  per- 
mitted thankfully  to  announce,  has  within  the  last  few 
years  dawned  upon  our  city  and  the  contiguous  country. 
Capital  which  had  vanished  from  its  old  channels  has  reap- 
peared in  new  ones,  and  is  seeking  new  outlets  for  itself. 
Instead  of  the  monuments  of  our  former  prosperity,  which 
were  to  be  found  in  a  hundred  palatial  residences  adorning 
our  environs,  we  see  the  monuments  of  the  prosperity  of 
to-day  in  the  towering  smoke-stacks  of  our  factories,  in 
the  arriving  and  departing  trains  of  our  railway,  in  the 
suburban  boroughs  which  are  linking;  themselves  to  the 
outskirts  of  our  corporation,  and  in  the  scores  of  tasteful 
dwellings  which  every  year  is  adding  to  the  homes  of  our 
people,  and  in  the  increasing  number  and  advanced 
grade  of  our  institutions  of  learning.  A  spirit  of  hope- 
fulness and  enterprise  has  awakened  like  a  strong  man 
from  his  slumber,  and  has  already  attested  its  prowess  in 
the  bold  achievements  it  has  wrought,  and  is  bracing  itself 
we  may  trust  for  still  more  conspicuous  efforts.     And  the 


94  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

church,  too,  is  catching  something  of  the  returning  sun- 
light, and  feeling  something  of  the  lift  of  the  incoming 
tide.  All  along  these  clouded  years  to  which  I  have  been 
referring,  there  has  been  an  inner  circle  of  its  members, — 
an  elect  band  whom  no  tribulation  or  temptation  could 
estrange  from  the  service  and  kingdom  of  the  Lord, — who, 
in  the  midst  of  abounding  worldliness,  have  kept  their 
garments  unspotted  and  maintained  a  walk  with  God, — 
and  who  have  ceased  not  to  mourn  over  the  desolations 
of  Zion,  and  to  stretch  forth  their  hands  to  sustain  her 
crumbling  altars.  They  have  stood  by  their  pastor  in 
all  these  times  of  discouragement,  in  keeping  up  the 
ordinances  of  worship  and  carrying  on  the  various  de- 
partments of  the  work  of  the  church.  As  an  evidence 
that  some  faithful  souls  still  survived,  I  may  mention  that 
in  the  year  1876  a  plain  but  commodious  chapel  was 
erected  and  dedicated  on  a  lot  purchased  on  St.  Catherine 
Street,  for  the  use  of  the  population  living  on  and  con- 
tiguous to  that  important  thoroughfare.  A  Sunday- 
school  was  opened,  and  regular  weekly  services  have 
been  held  ever  since, — conducted  for  the  most  part  by 
one  of  the  ruling  elders  of  the  church.  This  chapel,  we 
have  reason  to  believe,  has  endeared  itself  to  those  for 
whose  benefit  it  was  reared,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  has 
deigned  to  bless  its  humble  ministrations  to  the  good  of 
many  of  them. 

At  the  present  time  many  things  indicate  an  awakened 
interest  on  the  part  of  the  congregation  in  the  welfare  of 
the  church, — of  which  the  anniversary  exercises  in  which 


A    FORTY    YEARS'    PASTORATE.  95 

we  are  now  engaged  may  be  taken  as  one.  Perhaps  these 
indications  go  even  so  far  as  to  reveal,  to  some  extent, 
that  the  healthful  throbbing  of  the  spiritual  pulse  of  the 
church  has  recommenced.  The  ordinary  attendance  upon 
public  worship  is  large  and  apparently  increasing.  The 
influx  of  population  to  our  town  has  brought  us  some 
accession  of  valuable  members.  The  Sunday-school  in- 
struction has  been  so  blessed  of  God  that  a  considerable 
number  of  those  who  have  been  under  it  have  attached 
themselves  to  the  communion  of  the  church.  During  the 
year  just  closed  twenty-four  persons  were  added  to  our 
membership  on  profession  of  faith,  and  two  on  certificates 
from  other  churches.  The  present  roll  of  members  con- 
tains three  hundred  and  twenty  names.  The  contribu- 
tions to  Domestic  and  Foreign  missions  for  the  year  have 
amounted  to  five  hundred  and  sixty-one  dollars  and  forty- 
five  cents.  The  finances  of  the  church  have  reached  a 
condition  which  relieves  its  supervisors  of  the  embarrass- 
ment under  which  for  some  years  past  they  have  been 
laboring.  There  are  signs,  too,  that  that  miserable 
fallacy  that  the  church  as  a  whole — which  is  an  abstract 
conception — can  live  and  do  its  work  while  the  individual 
members,  who  are  its  concrete  components,  are  doing 
nothing, — is  being  discovered  and  dismissed.  The  con- 
viction that  each  follower  of  Christ  has  some  respon- 
sibility in  carrying  forward  the  work  of  his  church, 
and  that  this  work  is  to  be  effected  as  the  aggregate 
result  of  the  many  separate  efforts  of  the  persons  who 
constitute    its   membership,   has   been    taking    shape    in 


96  A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

the  minds  and  asserting  itself  in  the  action  of  onr 
people.  The  question  has  been  raised,  can  we  not  have 
a  hive  with  no  drones  in  it  ?  In  order  to  effect  this  result 
a  plan  of  organization,  which  is  designed  to  promote 
unity  of  feeling  and  to  afford  facilities  for  more  efficient 
action  in  Christian  work,  has  been  adopted.  Under  this 
plan  the  whole  body  of  communicants  has  been  distributed 
into  minor  divisions,  each  of  which  has  been  placed  under 
the  leadership  of  suitable  officers,  and  monthly  meetings 
are  appointed  for  the  proposing  and  transacting  of  busi- 
ness. The  plan  is  yet  in  its  experimental  stage,  and  can 
succeed  only  in  so  far  as  it  finds  hearts  among  Christ's 
professed  followers  who  are  willing  to  respond  to  His  call 
for  laborers  in  His  vineyard.  But,  in  so  far  as  it  has  yet 
been  tried,  it  has  already  proved  itself  capable  of  ac- 
complishing important  results.  We  are  brought,  it  seems 
to  me,  my  brethren,  by  these  facts  to  a  point  in  the  history 
of  this  church  in  which  the  Saviour  seems  to  be  asking  us 
to  watch  and  to  pray  with  Him  with  as  much  earnestness 
as  He  showed  when  He  made  the  same  request  of  His 
disciples  in  Gethsemane ;  and  in  which  so  much  depends 
upon  our  fidelity  to  the  trust  He  has  committed  to  us, — 
that  it  may  be  said  the  enemies  from  whom  He  has  to  fear 
the  most  damage,  are  the  slumberers  who  are  to  be  found 
in  the  house  of  His  friends.  Material  prosperity  by  itself 
does  not  constitute  the  prosperity  of  a  community.  You 
may  build  up  your  fabrics  of  industry  and  at  the  same 
time  bring  down  the  character  of  your  men.  You  may 
spread  out  your  threads  of  enterprise,  and  in  their  meshes 


A    FORTY   YEARS'   PASTORATE.  97 

strangle  the  morals  of  your  people.  You  may  fill  the  air 
with  the  whir  of  machinery,  and  in  the  uproar  drown  the 
voice  of  God.  Sodom  stood  as  the  metropolis  of  a  terri- 
tory so  rich  in  resources  that  it  could  he  likened  to  ".the 
garden  of  the  Lord,"  and  yet  the  inhabitants  of  it  became 
so  corrupt  that  a  storm  of  fire  swept  them  from  the  earth. 
A  higher  authority  than  our  treatises  on  political  economy 
has  declared  that  "  Righteousness  exalteth  a  nation,  but 
sin  is  a  reproach  to  any  people;"  and  in  its  ultimate  out- 
workings  the  principle  will  be  found  to  be  as  true  as  is 
the  law  of  gravitation.  In  all  our  ambitious  schemings 
it  behooves  us,  therefore,  to  remember  that  righteousness 
is  the  fundamental  condition  and  security  of  all  the  success 
we  covet.  The  church  must  guard  this  sacred  corner- 
stone, and  every  loyal  member  of  the  church  ought  to 
be  found  at  his  post  ready  to  do  his  part  of  this  duty. 
Religious  faith,  religious  principle,  and  religious  modes 
of  life  must  be  maintained,  and  to  this  end  the  concerted 
efforts  of  all  Christian  people  should  be  directed  to  the 
support  and  multiplication  of  the  institutions  of  religion, 
the  protection  of  the  Sabbath  from  desecration,  the  sup- 
pression of  vicious  customs,  and  the  extirpation  of  the 
haunts  of  vice,  the  discouragement  of  illicit  practices  in 
trade,  and  the  enforcement  of  civil  and  criminal  law. 
Fraud,  unchastity,  drunkenness,  and  blood-shedding  are 
as  truly  bars  to  the  prosperity  of  a  community  as  are 
cyclones  and  epidemics,  and  if  the  sins  of  luxury,  sensu- 
ality, and  sordid  mammon-worship  are  to  be  the  fruits  of 
our  prosperity,  it  may  be  found  that  our  "  children's  teeth 


(J8  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

have  been  set  on  edge"  by  the  "  sour  grapes"  their  fathers 
have  eaten. 

The  history  of  a  community  located  as  near  the  South- 
ern seaboard  as  this  city  is,  is  liable  to  be  made  "  event- 
ful" by  occasional  visitations  of  those  diseases  which  are 
indigenous  to  the  tropics.  And,  accordingly,  it  has  been 
my  lot  during  the  last  forty  years  to  pass  through  six 
seasons  made  memorable  by  the  prevalence  of  the  yellow 
fever.  Considering  our  exposed  position,  it  seems  to  me 
it  ought  to  be  recognized  as  another  testimony  to  the 
kind  superintendence  of  Providence  that  so  few  of  these 
epidemic  plagues  within  so  long  a  period  have  been  per- 
mitted to  occur.  In  some  of  those  which  took  place  prior 
to  1869,  during  the  first  quarter-century  of  my  pastorate, 
the  mortality  was  appalling,  and  this  church  suffered  the 
loss  of  many  of  its  cherished  members.  Within  the  last 
fifteen  years,  with  one  exception,  our  city  has  been  exempt 
from  the  assaults  of  the  pestilence.  In  1871,  for  more 
than  two  months,  it  prevailed  among  us,  and  carried  a 
considerable  number  of  victims  to  the  grave.  Only  one 
of  these  was  from  our  church  communion.  In  1878,  when 
the  whole  Southwest  seemed  to  be  overshadowed  by  the 
death-laden  cloud,  this  community  was  favored  with  an 
almost  miraculous  escape.  Beleaguered  with  a  circle  of 
fire,  like  the  bush  which  Moses  saw,  it  remained  un- 
consumed.  Death  reaped  its  precious  harvests  in  other 
localities,  but  some  sign,  which  wTe  saw  not,  warned  the 
destroyer  from  our  doors.  This  deserves  to  be  called  our 
Passover  summer.     The  best  and  most   rigorous  means 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  99 

of  protection  were  adopted  and  patiently  carried  out  by 
our  citizens,  and  in  one  view  our  deliverance  may  be 
ascribed  to  them.  But,  believing  as  I  do,  that  God  works 
through  all  the  devices  of  human  wisdom  and  makes 
them  efficient,  I  am  sure  that  an  angel  of  mercy  stood 
guard  over  us  at  every  quarantine  station,  and  that  our 
escape  was  really  due  to  the  distinguishing  goodness  and 
the  protecting  power  of  the  Lord  our  God.  In  this  con- 
nection I  may  be  pardoned  for  alluding  to  the  remarkable 
exemption  from  disease  which  has  been  vouchsafed  to  me 
personally  since  I  came  among  you.  Few  ministers,  I 
imagine,  have  enjoyed  more  uniform  health  than  I  have, 
or  have  been  able  to  devote  as  large  a  proportion  of  so 
long  a  period  to  their  work  as  I  have  done.  This  endur- 
ance may  be  owing  in  a  measure  to  the  considerateness 
you  have  shown  in  remembering  that  mortal  beings 
generally,  and  especially  those  who  live  under  a  constant 
strain  of  brain  and  heart,  need  occasionally  a  season  of 
repose. 

Among  the  events  which  are  included  in  the  ecclesias- 
tical history  of  the  last  forty  years,  is  one  so  singular,  that 
had  it  been  prognosticated  at  the  time  when  I  began  my 
ministry,  I  should  have  pronounced  it  an  impossibility.  I 
refer  to  the  sundering  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  into  its 
Northern  and  Southern  sections,  consequent  upon  the 
late  war.  When  the  political  elements  began  to  threaten 
the  country  with  dismemberment,  it  was  my  hope  and 
almost  my  conviction,  as  I  know  it  was  of  many  others, 
that  the  sacred  cord  of  Christian  brotherhood  which  held 


100  A    FORTY   FEARS'    PASTORATE. 

this  large  denomination  in  union  would  be  a  cable  strong 
enough  to  prevent  the  dissolution  of  the  States.  But  the 
event  occurred,  and  it  has  determined  your  relation  as  a 
church  and  mine  as  a  minister  to  a  different  fold  from 
that  to  which  our  fathers  belonged.  In  all  the  commo- 
tions, the  excitements,  and  even  the  errors  to  which  this 
rupture  may  be  traced  we  must  believe  the  Lord  was  still 
leading  His  people;  and  it  may  be  His  will,  by  this  new 
arrangement,  to  throw  around  important  principles  the 
necessary  safeguards,  and  to  lend  increased  momentum 
to  the  activities  of  His  church.  But  that  the  animosities 
which  are  apt  to  survive  these  family  separations,  and  to 
grow  if  not  arrested  into  inveterate  feuds,  should,  in  such 
a  case  as  this,  be  allayed,  must  be  an  issue  to  be  devoutly 
desired  by  every  Christian  heart.  And  in  order  to  this, 
the  forms  of  speech  and  thought  which  stimulate  these 
animosities,  need  to  be,  as  far  as  possible,  dropped  from 
the  use  of  the  parties.  The  hand  of  the  Lord  has  again 
been  revealed  in  bringing  about  this  issue.  Within  the 
last  two  years  fraternal  relationship  and  correspondence 
have  been  officially  established  between  these  two  divided 
bodies,  and  I  gratefully  reflect  upon  the  fact  that  I  have 
been  permitted  at  the  close  of  my  ministry  to  see  the 
consummation  of  this  event,  and  to  behold  among  the 
phenomena  of  my  setting  sun,  the  rainbow  of  peace 
throwing  its  arch  over  the  chasm  which  has  so  long  kept 
apart  the  different  branches  of  the  one  church  under 
whose  auspices  I  began  my  ministry. 

It  may  be  well,  before  I  close  these  reminiscences,  to 


A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  101 

mention  some  of  the  practical  details  of  my  ministerial 
work,  as  illustrative  of  what  is  comprehended  in  a  pastor's 
vocation.  From  my  note-books  I  gather  that  I  have 
delivered  during  my  pastorate  some  six  thousand  sermons 
and  lectures.  Among  these  have  been  complete  courses 
of  study  upon  the  "  Life  of  our  Lord,"  the  "  Life  of  St. 
Paul,"  the  "  Lives  of  the  Patriarchs,"  the  "  Times  of  the 
Judges,"  the  "  History  of  the  Kings  of  Judah  and  Israel," 
the  "  Exodus  of  the  Israelites,"  the  "  Prophecies  of 
Daniel,"  the  "  Book  of  Job,"  select  portions  of  the  "Book 
of  Psalms"  and  the  "Epistles,"  the  "History  of  the 
Christian  Church,"  and  the  contents  of  the  "Westminster 
Shorter  Catechism."  I  have  in  addition  to  these  de- 
livered numerous  addresses  to  benevolent  and  literary 
associations.  I  have  officiated  at  eight  hundred  and 
fifty-five  funerals.  Among  these,  in  late  years,  was  that 
of  the  venerable  father  in  the  Southwestern  Church,  the 
Rev.  Benjamin  Chase,  D.D.,  who  died  October  11,  1870, 
and  that  of  my  life-long  friend  and  co-laborer,  the  Rev. 
James  Purviance,  D.D.,  formerly  pastor  of  the  Carmel 
Church,  and  subsequently,  from  1854  to  1860,  president 
of  Oakland  College,  who  died  July  14, 1871.  There  have 
been  admitted  to  the  church  eight  hundred  and  eleven 
communicants,  of  whom  six  hundred  and  fifteen  were  on 
profession  of  their  faith.  I  have  administered  the  rite 
of  baptism  to  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  adult  persons, 
and  to  seven  hundred  and  ninety-two  infants.  I  have 
united  in  marriage  four  hundred  and  nine  couples.  There 
has  been  contributed  by  this  church,  during  my  pastorate, 


102  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

for  religious  and  benevolent  objects  (exclusive  of  the 
ordinary  support  of  the  church  organization)  an  aggregate 
of  three  hundred  thousand  dollars.  I  have  in  connection 
with  my  regular  labors  contributed  somewhat  largely  to 
the  literature  of  the  religious  press,  and,  besides  several 
pamphlets,  have  published  one  volume  entitled  "  Confess- 
ing Christ,"  to  which  I  hope  soon  to  add  another,  to  be 
entitled  "  Following  Christ," — which  two  books  I  have 
prepared  mainly  as  a  legacy  to  my  people.  The  phases  of 
human  life,  and  the  scenes  of  joy  and  sorrow  in  the  evo- 
lutions of  human  experience,  which  have  passed  before 
me  in  my  intercourse  with  my  fellow-men,  would  defy 
enumeration,  and  would  be  stranger  than  all  the  fictions 
which  the  poet  or  dramatist  ever  invented.  And  the 
result  of  all  has  been  to  impress  me  with  the  conviction 
that  the  state  through  which  we  are  now  passing  is  a 
mazy  wilderness,  in  which  an  absolute  faith  in  God  can 
give  us  our  only  clue,  and  our  only  solace  is  to  be  found 
in  the  hope  of  another  world  where  what  is  rudimental 
here  will  be  perfected,  and  what  is  anomalous  will  be 
adjusted  and  made  plain. 

I  claim  the  privilege  of  adding  to  this  historical  review 
a  few  reflections  suggested  by  my  position  to-day. 

First,  I  am  teaching  the  same  system  of  religion  at  the 
end  of  my  ministry,  which  I  taught  at  the  beginning  of 
it.  It  is  the  religion  of  the  Bible, — a  religion  which  claims 
to  be  true  because  the  Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  and 
which  claims  to  give  a  right  report  of  the  sense  of  the 
Bible,  because  it  is  sustained  in  all  its  essential  features 


A    FORTV   YEARS'    PASTORATE.  103 

by  the  consenting  testimony  of  all  those  churches  which 
receive  the  Bible  without  addition  or  admixture  as  a  rule 
of  their  faith.  I  read  the  Bible  to-day  precisely  as  I  read 
it  forty  years  ago,  and  the  various  forms  of  evidence  by 
which  it  is  proved  to  be  God's  book  of  religion  are  just 
as  strong  in  my  mind  now  as  they  were  then.  I  found  in 
that  book  the  species  of  religion  which  satisfied  both  my 
intellect  and  my  heart  when  I  was  first  led  to  ask  the 
question,  what  and  where  is  religion?  and  I  have  clung 
to  it  ever  since,  as  an  infant  clings  to  its  mother's  breast. 
And  yet,  in  one  respect,  this  religion  of  the  Bible  presents 
itself  to  my  mind  under  a  new  aspect  after  the  preaching 
of  it  for  a  lifetime.  I  have  tested  its  applicability  to  the 
circumstances  and  needs  of  men.  I  have  had  an  ample 
opportunity  to  understand  these  circumstances  and  needs, 
and  I  have  found  the  religion  of  the  Bible  squaring  with 
and  fitting  into  them  all.  It  is  adjusted  to  the  conditions 
and  wants  of  the  soul  as  light  is  to  those  of  the  eye.  It 
suits  man  as  the  subject  of  those  naturally  pious  instincts 
which  constrain  him  to  seek  after  a  Divinity,  and  shows 
him  a  God  worthy  of  his  confidence  and  worship.  It 
suits  man  as  the  possessor  of  a  moral  sense,  and  shows 
him  a  law  which  reveals  perfectly  to  that  sense,  in  broad 
distinction,  the  two  territories  of  righteousness  and  un- 
righteousness. It  suits  man  as  a  sinner,  and  shows  him 
how  forgiveness  may  be  obtained  without  impairing  the 
rectitude  of  God,  or  invading  the  immutability  of  His  law. 
It  suits  man  as  a  being  liable  to  temptation,  and  shows 
him  sources  of  supernatural  succor.     It  suits  man  as  an 


104  A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

infirm  being,  and  shows  him  how,  by  spiritual  aids,  weak- 
ness may  be  converted  into  strength.  It  suits  man  as  a 
mourner,  and  shows  him  springs  of  consolation  in  his 
deepest  distresses.  It  suits  man  as  a  dying  creature,  and 
shows  him  a  pathway  to  eternal  life  through  the  darkness 
of  the  grave.  It  suits  man  at  every  season  of  life,  in 
every  possible  relation,  under  all  conceivable  contingen- 
cies, and  shows  him  in  them  all  the  exact  way  in  which 
he  may  walk  most  wisely  and  securely.  If  anything 
better  than  this  religion,  as  the  converter,  the  reformer, 
the  benefactor,  and  the  sanctifier  of  man,  has  been  intro- 
duced into  the  world,  I  have  never  seen  or  heard  of  it. 
Of  one  thing  I  am  sure,  if  this  religion  has  not  been  able 
to  convert,  to  reform,  to  bless,  and  to  sanctify  those  who 
have  been  listening  to  the  exposition  of  it  for  forty  years, 
nothing  else  which  could  possibly  be  brought  to  them 
under  the  name  of  religion  can  be  expected  to  do  it. 
Where  the  sunbeam  from  the  heavens  has  failed  to  pene- 
trate a  darkened  chamber,  I  am  sure  the  lesser  lights 
which  men  have  kindled,  electric  though  they  may  be, 
will  fail  still  more  signally.  Therefore,  my  brethren,  this 
gospel  of  the  grace  of  God  which  I  have  preached  to  you 
in  the  past,  I  expect  to  preach  to  you  to  the  end,  and 
with  the  observations  of  forty  years  behind  me,  I  am,  like 
St.  Paul,  only  the  more  "  determined  not  to  know  any- 
thing among  you  save  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  crucified." 

Second,  I  am  more  than  ever  satisfied  of  the  certainty 
of  the  progressive  prevalence  and  final  triumph  of  the 
religion  of  the  Bible.     Opposition  to  that  religion  has 


A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE.  105 

taken  new  forms,  and  assumed  a  peculiarly  bold  front 
within  my  recollection.  A  microscopic  criticism,  failing 
to  make  the  grand  generalization  which  sees  in  the  whole 
Bible  a  unity  of  design  and  an  orderly  consistency  which 
entitle  it  to  credence,  is  occupying  itself  with  the  minute 
study  of  words  and  pli rases,  and  drawing  from  their 
ambiguities  or  incompatibilities  conclusions  adverse  to  the 
authenticity  of  the  Holy  Book.  This  is  like  the  insect 
pronouncing  St.  Paul's  cathedral  an  abortion  because  its 
tiny  feet  have  stumbled  over  a  rough  spot  within  the 
majestic  dome.  Materialists  would  take  away  from  us 
our  God  because  they  tell  us  we  can  know  only  facts,  and 
facts  are  natural  not  supernatural  things.  In  this  drift  of 
science  towards  the  ultimate  authority  of  facts,  I  think  I 
see  the  movement  of  a  forerunner  preparing  unwittingly 
the  way  for  the  enthronement  of  the  religion  of  the  Bible. 
This  principle  of  the  materialist,  that  belief  must  rest  on 
facts,  is  the  very  one  upon  which  the  Bible  has  always 
laid  claim  to  the  belief  of  men.  Only,  the  Bible  is  more 
accurate  than  the  materialist,  and  admits  that  there  are 
facts  which  the  senses  do  not  take  cognizance  of.  Science, 
in  following  the  train  of  facts  which  it  can  see  and  handle, 
reaches,  sooner  or  later,  in  every  direction  a  point  or  line 
where  it  needs  for  the  solution  of  its  problems  some 
fact  which  it  cannot  see  or  handle.  It  comes  to  the  border 
of  a  chasm  where  something  ought  to  be,  and  where  it 
can  find  nothing.  The  Bible  does  not  contradict  science, 
but  speaks  in  exact  harmony  with  it  when  it  lifts  its  voice 
over  the  chasm  and  cries,  "  In  the  beginning  God  created 


106  A    FORTY   YEARS'    PASTORATE. 

the  heavens  and  the  earth."  In  leading  men  to  build 
their  faith  on  facts,  materialists  are  opening  the  very 
track  Iry  which  they  must  he  led  ultimately  to  accept 
the  Bible  as  a  revelation  of  truth.  The  Bible  is  itself 
a  fact,  the  existence  of  which  in  our  world,  and  the 
contents  of  which  call  for  notice  and  explanation,  in 
the  face  of  all  that  science  may  say  to  its  discredit. 
Jesus  Christ  is  a  fact,  and  the  existence  of  the  church 
which  bears  His  name,  and  the  extraordinary  history  of 
that  church  are  facts,  and  these  all  deserve  study.  The 
phenomena  of  conscience,  and  the  religious  intuitions 
and  workings  of  the  soul,  are  facts  which  no  thoroughly 
scientific  mind  can  overlook.  It  is  just  because  men  will 
not  regard  the  facts  by  which  they  are  environed,  and  by 
which  their  destiny  is  to  be  determined,  that  the}'  do  not 
become  believers  in  the  Bible.  Let  the  apostles  of  science 
push  forward  their  discoveries,  and  lay  bare  as  widely  as 
they  can  the  domain  of  facts.  I  am  sure  that  in  doing 
so  they  are  only  making  ready  the  field  for  the  mission  of 
the  apostles  of  Christ. 

Third,  it  appears  to  me  that  just  here  where  we  live, 
and  just  at  this  epoch,  there  is  a  special  reason  why  all 
Christians — and  I  may,  as  your  pastor,  lay  the  obligation 
particularly  upon  you,  my  brethren  of  this  church — should 
make  the  type  of  their  religion  so  legible  that  the  excel- 
lency of  it  may  be  "known  and  read  of  all  men."  We 
have  become  in  the  progress  of  the  years  a  heterogeneous 
population.  Representatives  of  the  creeds,  the  polities, 
the  rituals,  the  forms  of  thought,  the  virtues  and  the  vices 


A    FORTY  YEARS'    PASTORATE.  107 

of  various  races  and  nationalities  are  gathered  here  upon 
this  narrow  platform.  All  have  a  right  to  be  here,  and 
all  are  covered  by  the  aegis  of  our  tolerant  and  liberal 
constitution.  We  meet  as  neighbors,  as  associates  in 
business,  and  as  visitors  at  our  respective  homes.  How 
necessary,  in  this  crowd  of  observers,  and  in  this  throng 
of  competing  claimants  of  the  true  religion,  that  we, — 
to  limit  my  remark  to  the  members  of  my  own  flock, 
— that  ive  should  make  such  an  exhibition  of  religion 
after  our  Presbyterian  model,  that,  by  its  manifest  superi- 
ority as  a  power  to  make  men  Christ-like  and  image- 
bearers  of  God,  in  purity,  in  uprightness,  and  in  charity, 
it  may  lead  others,  whom  we  suppose  to  be  in  error,  to 
adopt  our  better  system  of  faith  and  life. 

Fourth,  I  would  urge  upon  the  present  membership  of 
the  church  the  duty  of  handing  down  to  a  future  genera- 
tion the  ideas  of  Christian  doctrine  and  of  Christian 
living,  of  loyalty  to  truth  and  consecration  to  God,  which 
have  characterized  its  membership  in  the  former  stages  of 
its  history.  The  homes  of  our  fathers,  in  which  the 
thought  of  God  mingled  with  every  event  in  the  family 
history,  in  which  the  domestic  altar  stood  by  every  fire- 
side, and  the  blessed  Saviour  was  an  ever-present  inmate, 
where  are  they?  The  future  lies  in  the  hands  of  the 
present,  and  we,  who  are  the  inheritors  of  blessings  trans- 
mitted to  us  by  the  pious  ancestors  of  forty  years  ago, 
are  bound  to  see  that  those  blessings  shall  be  conveyed 
unimpaired  to  the  generation  who  shall  occupy  these  seats 
forty  years  hence. 


108  A    FORTY   FEARS'    PASTORATE. 

And,  lastly,  I  would  be  reminded  myself  and  remind 
you,  that  it  is  a  journey  through  a  wilderness  which  we 
are  all  now  prosecuting.  There  is  no  resting,  no  finality, 
in  our  present  sphere.  We  are  a  caravan,  not  a  settled 
community.  The  value  of  everything  to  which  we  can 
here  turn  our  hands  lies  in  something  beyond.  We  are 
travelling  through  arid  tracts  where  no  water  is,  and 
through  dreary  solitudes  where  no  sunbeam  reaches  us. 
We  pitch  our  tents  each  day  at  a  new  encampment. 
Each  night's  repose  is  to  freshen  us  for  the  morrow's  toil. 
The  hot  breath  of  the  simoom  or  the  wild  blast  of  the 
sirocco  threaten  us  each  moment  with  insidious  or  violent 
destruction.  Oh,  happy  they  who  have  a  better  country 
in  view'!  If  you  have  no  Canaan  in  your  eye,  my  friends, 
I  pity  you.  You  are  aimless  wanderers  in  a  desert,  entitled 
to  no  higher  respect  than  the  birds  of  the  air,  or  the 
beasts  of  the  field.  Oh,  let  us  beware  of  the  folly  of  those 
unbelieving  Israelites,  who,  through  a  base  rejection  of 
the  terms  upon  which  the  prize  was  offered  to  them, 
failed  to  enter  into  the  promised  rest !  We  shall  never 
observe  together  a  festival  like  this.  Our  earthly  anni- 
versaries will  soon  end,  and  the  years  of  time  melt  into 
the  solemn  eternity.  The  partings  of  the  past  will  be 
repeated  in  the  future,  and  to  the  generation  who  shall 
worship  in  these  courts  forty  years  hence  most  of  us  will 
be  the  forgotten  ones,  as  the  worshippers  of  forty  years 
ago  are  to  us  to-day.  Beloved,  from  these  abodes  of 
sin  and  sorrow  and  death,  let  us  resolutely  set  our  faces, 
and  prosecute  our  march  towards  the  realms  of  light ! 


A   FORTY   FEARS'    PASTORATE.  109 

Let  us  cling  to  the  footprints  of  those  who  through  faith 
and  patience  have  already  inherited  the  promises !  Let 
us  follow  the  leadings  of  the  Lord  our  God  through  the 
intricacies  of  this  mortal  stage,  that  when  we  shall  have 
left  it  we  may  all  meet, — heyond  the  Jordan, — where  the 
pain  and  the  weariness  of  the  pilgrimage  shall  be  eternally 
forgotten  in  "the  rest  that  remains  for  the  people  of  God  !" 


Theological  Seminary-Speer 


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